Date and time
16 September 2020 (12:00 – 14:30 CET)
17 September 2020 (12:30 – 14:30 CET)
Scope and purpose
Fortification is the practice of deliberately increasing the content of one or more micronutrients, i.e. vitamins and minerals in food, so as to improve the nutritional quality of the food supply and provide a public health benefit with minimal risk to health1. Fortification of staple foods2 is one of the strategies that has been used to safely and effectively prevent vitamin and mineral deficiencies in populations.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is committed to driving public health impact in every country ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages. Through its unique normative function in health, WHO aims to provide global, evidence-informed recommendations on the fortification of wheat flour with vitamins and minerals to improve health outcomes associated with micronutrient status in public health. These guidelines will support WHO regional and country offices work and will help Member States and their partners to make evidence-informed decisions on the appropriate actions in their efforts to improve access to quality essential health services, support countries to be prepared for health emergencies, and address the determinants of health. It will also help in increasing capacity in the countries to respond to their needs on improving micronutrient status and to prioritize essential actions in national health policies, strategies and plans.
This normative work is aligned with the World Health Organization 13th General Programme of Work3 approved by the Seventy-First World Health Assembly in resolution WHA71.1 on 25 May 2018, and based on the Sustainable Development Goals, and is relevant to all – low-, middle- and high-income countries. Its strategic priorities and goals include specifically enabling countries to provide high-quality, people-centred health services, based on primary health care strategies and comprehensive essential service packages through collaboration and coordination from diverse sectors in their efforts to improve human capital across the life course. This normative mandate aims to strengthen the evidence base of effective and safe nutrition actions to counteract the public health effects of the double burden of malnutrition and to describe good practices for successful implementation.
The WHO guideline development group – micronutrients were established for the biennium 2010–2011. Its role was to advise WHO on the choice of critical outcomes for decision-making within the scope of guidelines on food fortification with vitamins and minerals to improve nutritional status of populations. This group developed and prioritized the questions (in PICO4 format) for food fortification, which included staple foods as wheat and corn flours, oil, rice and condiments. Another guideline group, the WHO guideline development group – nutrition actions, established for the biennium 2013–2014 reviewed the evidence and held deliberations on the interpretation of the evidence and the recommendations for maize flour and cornmeal, rice and condiments.
The WHO Department of Nutrition and Food Safety is convening the guideline development group to review and evaluate the direction and certainty of evidence and advice WHO on updating the recommendations on wheat flour fortification to address micronutrient deficiencies in public health. The methods for established in the WHO Handbook for Guideline Development5 will be followed. This guideline development group meeting will be conducted virtually, via Zoom meeting, on 16 September 2020 (12:00 – 14:30 CET) and 17 September 2020 (12:30 – 14:30 CET).
The objectives of this guideline development group meeting are:
- To examine the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) evidence-to-decision profiles or other assessments of the certainty of the evidence used to inform the recommendations and provide input;
- To interpret the evidence, with explicit consideration of the overall balance of benefits and harms;
- To formulate recommendations and determining their strength considering benefits, harms, values and preferences, feasibility, equity, ethics, acceptability, resource requirements and other factors, as appropriate;
- To define implications for further research and gaps;
- To discuss implementation and evaluation considerations of the guideline.