The County Executive for the Department of Health and Sanitation, Dr Francis Mariao together with county and sub-county senior officers participated in a USAID Nawiri joint field visit and learning session.

NAWIRI, which recently got an additional three-year extension from its donor–USAID Kenya, has organized a session to discuss the program’s progress, its partnership, and co-implementation with the Health Department.

While giving his opening remarks, CECM Dr. Mariao commended the organization for its extensive research to discover the actual causes of acute persistent malnutrition in Turkana.

“The studies will put into context the pastoralist into a nutrition conception framework to design interventions that will have a lasting impact,” he said.

He advised the partner to align their program activities with the current CIDP III (2023-2027) and be transparent with its budget for accountability.

USAID NAWIRI is working in four thematic areas including, livestock and crop production, market linkage and financial inclusion, skills acquisition, and household economic strengthening.

The Health Systems Advisor for USAID NAWIRI, Lominito Lomoru highlighted that the organization had broadly identified livelihoods, gender social dynamics, nutrition, and governance approaches to suitably reduce acute persistent malnutrition.

“The objective of the engagement with County Health senior leadership is to present USAID NAWIRI’s interventions over the last five years for feedback,” he said.

The participants from the county and sub-county teams will visit some of the program’s sites for assessment and regroup to discuss the field visit findings.