The World Food Programme[a] (WFP) is the food-assistance branch of the United Nations. It is the world's largest humanitarian organization focused on hunger and food security, and the largest provider of school meals. Founded in 1961, it is headquartered in Rome and has offices in 80 countries. As of 2020, it served 115.5 million people in 80-plus countries, the largest since 2012.In addition to emergency food relief, WFP offers technical assistance and development aid, such as building capacity for emergency preparedness and response, managing supply chains and logistics, promoting social safety programs, and strengthening resilience against climate change. The agency is also a major provider of direct cash assistance and medical supplies, and provides passenger services for humanitarian workers.WFP is an executive member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, a consortium of UN entities that aims to fulfil the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), with a priority on achieving SDG 2 for "zero hunger" by 2030.The World Food Programme was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2020 for its efforts to provide food assistance in areas of conflict, and to prevent the use of food as a weapon of war and conflict.
Shortages and maldistribution of frontline health workers remain a major barrier to rural health service delivery in Ghana. While pay increases are often viewed as the primary lever for improving recruitment and retention, fiscal constraints have intensified interest in non-wage incentives. We conducted cadre-specific discrete choice experiments with 206 community health officers (CHOs) and 404 community health volunteers (CHVs) across eight districts in four regions to elicit preferences for job attributes. For CHOs, although higher salaries increase job attractiveness, facility quality—including reliable utilities, essential equipment, and staff accommodation—exerts the strongest influence on job choice, followed by career development opportunities and transport support; increased supervision has no measurable effect. For CHVs, facility quality is also most valued, followed by training opportunities and recognition-based incentives, whereas small stipends have comparatively limited marginal effects. Willingness-to-pay estimates and policy simulations indicate that upgrading facilities can generate larger increases in predicted job acceptance than comparable increases in compensation. These findings suggest that, beyond pay, improvements in working and living conditions and structured professional development can play a central role in multi-faceted strategies to recruit and retain rural frontline health workers.
Background Following the declaration of mpox as both a global and continental public health emergency in August 2024, the Joint Incident Management Support Team (IMST), co-led by the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the WHO, was activated in Kinshasa, DRC to coordinate the continental mpox response. This article highlights the first year’s epidemiological and operational findings.Methods Key performance indicators across eight IMST pillars (coordination, surveillance, laboratory, case management, infection prevention and control, risk communication and community engagement (RCCE), vaccination and research) were descriptively analysed using data from 28 African Union Member States from January 2024 to August 2025.Results A total of 49 803 confirmed cases and 240 deaths (CFR 0.5%) were recorded across 28 countries. The response was supported with US$977 million as tracked by the IMST. Operational achievements included 87% surveillance completeness, 72% contact tracing completeness and improved average laboratory turnaround time from >5 days to 2 days. Laboratory testing capacity expanded from 2 to 27 sites in the DRC and from 1 to 56 decentralised sites in Burundi. RCCE activities reached 50 million people in 21 countries, with vaccine acceptance among high-risk groups rising from 44% to 87%. Operational research achievements included a responsive and functional research coordination mechanism, 24 (92%, 24/26) multi-country clinical and operational research studies implemented and 60% completion rate of the research data and material sharing framework for Africa. Only 938 000 doses (32%) of the 3.1 million vaccine doses delivered were administered.Conclusion The joint continental IMST is a new benchmark for response governance, successfully mobilising resources and scaling up diagnostics under unified co-leadership. On the other hand, the evaluation revealed persistent structural challenges in last-mile vaccine delivery, contact tracing (due to stigma/funding) and weak regional collaborative research including fragmented regional research priorities. Future focus must shift from emergency action to durable, sustained investment in national and sub-national health security architecture using a multisectoral whole of government approach.
Introduction Stunting is a global public health challenge, resulting from chronic undernutrition that begins in utero and continues through the first 2 years of life. In Afghanistan, the burden is severe, with nearly 45% of children under five being stunted. Maternal undernutrition, suboptimal breastfeeding, inadequate complementary feeding and other risks are the major contributors towards stunting. Despite ongoing nutrition interventions, evidence on integrated and context-specific approaches in Afghanistan is scarce. This study aims to assess the effectiveness of specialised nutritious food, promotion of local diets through local nutritious seasonal foods, appropriate maternal, infant and young child feeding practices and social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) to prevent stunting among children 6-24 months and to improve nutritional status and dietary diversity among pregnant and breastfeeding women (PBW).Methods and analysis A mixed-method observational study design will be employed, combining a prospective longitudinal cohort study, process evaluation and pre-post cross-sectional surveys. The intervention package will be implemented in two districts through health posts and community-based platforms. Lipid-based nutrient supplements for children aged 6-24 months and wheat-soya blend for PBW will be distributed monthly, along with SBCC sessions. Statistical analysis will use descriptive analysis, time-to-event analysis, generalised linear mixed models and thematic analysis for qualitative process evaluation. Expected outcomes include improved dietary diversity, reduced prevalence of stunting, underweight and wasting and enhanced weight and linear growth. Process evaluation will assess programme implementation fidelity, acceptability and dose-response relationships.
Inadequate dietary micronutrient intake is a significant risk factor for deficiency and remains a major global health challenge. Nutrition programmes and interventions are most effective when targeted to populations at greatest risk. Household Consumption and Expenditure Surveys (HCES) are a widely available source of dietary data; however, they are often not powered for estimation below the first administrative level, limiting their utility for geographically targeted interventions. To address this, we applied Bayesian Small Area Estimation (SAE) methods to estimate the prevalence of apparent inadequate intake at the second administrative level. Three approaches were considered: a cluster level Beta binomial model and two area level models (mean smoothing and joint smoothing). Models were evaluated using a Rwanda HCES survey that supports inference at this scale. All models were implemented in a fully Bayesian framework to propagate uncertainty. Simulation results in Rwanda showed that the cluster level Beta binomial model achieved the strongest performance, while the area level joint smoothing model was the most reliable alternative among models accounting for survey design. Based on these results, models were applied to Senegal and Nigeria. In Senegal, second administrative level estimates captured meaningful subnational variation, reduced uncertainty relative to direct estimates, and remained consistent with first administrative level benchmarks. In Nigeria, despite smaller sample sizes and survey design constraints, modelled estimates reduced extreme uncertainty and showed good agreement with first administrative level estimates. This study demonstrates that Bayesian SAE methods can be applied to HCES data to generate reliable fine scale estimates of inadequate micronutrient intake, supporting localised nutrition interventions.
Data scarcity limits inference in many scientific and policy domains. Survey data are essential for decision-making, but sparse samples often fail to capture fine spatial granularities. We evaluate normalizing flows, a generative model that learns complex data distributions and can be conditioned on exogenous contextual features, in controlled data scarcity scenarios. Across eight household survey datasets spanning six low-income or middle-income countries in the humanitarian domain, we show that context-conditioned generative models can refine sub-national survey distributions under severe data scarcity, and that performance increases systematically with the richness of the conditioning information. These findings support a general principle for survey data augmentation: generative models can improve sub-national estimates when the sparse sample retains sufficient support and contextual covariates encode relevant local heterogeneity. By learning full conditional distributions rather than point estimates, the approach provides fine-grained evidence for humanitarian decision-making and resource allocation.
