Maternal Nutrition addresses nutrition in women. Its scope includes pre-conceptual, antenatal and postnatal maternal nutrition, women's nutrition throughout their reproductive years, and fetal, neonatal, infant, child and adolescent nutrition and their effects throughout life. Women’s nutrient needs increase during pregnancy and lactation. If the requirements are not met, the consequences can be serious for women and their infants.
Reasons for women malnutrition;

• Food insecurity

• Multiple pregnancies

• Recurrent infections

• Inadequate diets

• Poor health care

• Frequent parasites

• Heavy work load

• Gender inequalities

• Women’s malnutrition life cycle

Infancy and early childhood(0-24)

• suboptimal breastfeeding

• inadequate complementary foods

• infrequent feeding

• frequent infections

• Community based Nutrition Rehabilitation.
• Maternal Nutrition.
• Low Birth Weight
• Essential Nutrition Actions.

Childhood(2-9)

• Poor diets

• poor health care

• poor education

Adolescent(10-19)

• increased nutritional demands

• greater iron needs

• early pregnancies

Pregnancy and lactation

• higher nutritional requirements

• increased micronutrient needs

• closely spaced reproductive cycles

Consequences of women’s malnutrition

• Increased morbidity and mortality

• Infections

• Reduces work capacity and economic productivity

• Neonatal and infant mortality

• Reproductive losses(abortions and stillbirth)

• Obstructed labour

• Low birth weight

• Intrauterine growth retardation

Interventions to improve women nutrition;

• Improve weight by increasing caloric intake, reduce energy expenditure and reduce caloric depletion; height by increase birth weight, enhance infant growth and improve adolescent growth.

• Improving Nutrition throughout the Life Cycle

• Early infancy – exclusive breastfeeding to six months of age

• Late infancy and childhood – adequate complementary feeding to breastfeeding

• Adolescent – eat more, supplementation with Iron and folic acid, deworming and delay first pregnancy

• Improve diet and care – during pregnancy and lactation having additional meals, diverse diet, reduction of work load, increase birth intervals.

• Birth spacing of three years or longer gives a woman’s body time to recover and replenish nutrients.

• Decreased heavy work and reducing work hours enable energy-deficient women to conserve energy needed for pregnancy and lactation.

• Discourage bad cultures and taboos that restrict pregnant women to eat eggs and meat etc.

• Parasite control - reduction of malaria infection in pregnant women by use of insecticide-treated materials (ITMs) and intermittent preventive treatment at second and third trimester of pregnancy. Reduction of hookworm infection by deworming pregnant women in the second trimester of pregnancy and Improvement of personal and environmental hygiene, wearing footwear and carefully disposing of feces can prevent hookworm infection.

• Initiate or strengthen health service systems for timely provision of micronutrient supplements, deworming, and malaria treatment.

• Supplementation with iron/folic and Vitamin A to be done to at risk groups.

• Increase community awareness by using IEC materials, leaders, influential people and elders.

• Promote intake of micronutrient rich foods and dietary diversification, coupled with food production or income-generation activities, to make more diverse foods available at the family level.

• Promote fortified foods where available and affordable.