ACF International Network
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Action Against Hunger has developed its water and sanitation expertise over nearly three decades of field work, advancing a number of solutions for populations at risk from water insecurity.
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Central to the targeting of malnutrition, Action Against Hunger extends water and sanitation improvements to communities with little or no access to proper sources.
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Action Against Hunger's programs are sustainable because of our commitment to community participation—to build local capacity and harnesses a population's energy and resources.
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Though strategies may vary, our food security interventions all share a common goal: to fight hunger by preserving and strengthening livelihoods in a sustainable and contextual manner.
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Action Against Hunger’s innovative food security programs offer a broad range of solutions for generating income, boosting food production, and strengthening livelihoods.
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Our comprehensive approach to hunger involves extending water and sanitation services to communities faced with water scarcity, unsafe drinking water, and inadequate sanitation.
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Action Against Hunger occupies a unique place among international organizations: our expertise encompasses emergency relief, longer-term development, and the terrain in between.
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We have developed an effective method to treat acute malnutrition that includes field-tested protocols and nutritional products backed by an international scientific advisory committee.
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Action Against Hunger helps rehabilitate and restock public health infrastructure, fields mobile health clinics, and trains local medical personnel on preventative and diagnostic care.
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Our comprehensive programs address the linkages between disease and malnutrition by coordinating with local expertise and strengthening existing public health systems.
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Where We Work

Scientific Committee

More than 10 years ago, Action Against Hunger began to realize the limitations of its field operations when dealing with malnutrition and its consequences.

In the 1980s, acute malnutrition was neglected and its treatment was poorly codified. Access to health care was mediocre, especially for rural populations, the overuse of medicine was common and one in four children in every feeding center died.

The mortality rate for severe malnutrition is generally 30-50%; with standard World Health Organization treatment, it comes down to about 10%. With the modern protocols pioneered by Action Against Hunger, the mortality rate is about 4%. Because Action Against Hunger is leading the way technically, by supporting ACF you will improve the programs of other leading private voluntary organizations who apply the lessons ACF has earned.
- Professor Michael Golden,
ACF Advisory Board Member

In 1994, Action Against Hunger decided to invest its resources and energy heavily into improving treatment for severe malnutrition in countries under states of emergency. In doing so, the organization launched a major undertaking of operational research employing modern methodologies supported by international nutritional experts.

The Scientific Advisory Committee of Nutrition was launched on February 10, 1994. Consisting of five researchers recognized for their contributions to the field of nutrition (Professors Michael Golden, Jean-Francois Desjeux, Andre Briend, Philippe Goyens and Dominique Bounie), the committee's goal is to maximize the effectiveness of existing nutritional programs through the sharing of advances made in nutrition research. This collaboration between researchers and practicing nutritionists has brought the latest products and improved techniques to the forefront, by enabling practitioners to use them and evaluate their viability in the field. This has allowed populations suffering from malnutrition to benefit from the latest advances in nutritional research. The collaboration also served to develop and share recommendations for the improvement of existing nutritional programs.

The most significant result of this undertaking was a staggering revolution in the treatment of the severely malnourished:

The mortality rate of severely malnourished children dropped from 25% to 5% thanks to the creation of a new therapeutic food product and a highly specific re-nutritional program employed in our Therapeutic Feeding Centers.

This was how the Scientific Committee of Action Against Hunger began. It later became the International Scientific Committee and nowadays participates in all of the organization's research projects.

Severe acute malnutrition totally disrupts a child's metabolism. This is why "ordinary" foods (e.g. meat) are not effective for re-nutrition. To nurse these children back to health, it is essential to give them specially medicated food adapted to their extreme condition.

Referring to John Waterlow's research carried out in Jamaica, Gambia, Senegal and Bangladesh in the previous 30 years, Prof. Golden was able to elaborate a new theory and create the F100 milk formula.

Action Against Hunger pioneered the milk formula in 1994 in Rwanda, with the support of the International Scientific Committee and Prof. Golden's direct involvement in the implementation of the treatment protocol. Yvonne Greletty, at the time Head of the Nutrition Department in the Paris headquarters of ACF, was instrumental in achieving excellent results in the field work and in providing crucial feedback to the committee on the progress of her team's efforts.

The International Scientific Committee publicly disseminated the F100 formula by publishing it in the scientific journal The Lancet. In addition, the F100 formula was not patented by Action Against Hunger, at Prof. Golden's suggestion, allowing it to remain available for universal use.

Since 1995, F100 has been officially acknowledged by the United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO). The irrefutable scientific evidence of the resulting drop in mortality led the WHO to recommend that Action Against Hunger's pioneering program be implemented on a global scale. Professor Golden wrote the first draft of the WHO manual, and today it is used extensively throughout the humanitarian world, by the scientific community, non-governmental organizations, the United Nations, and international donors.

Finally, the industrial processing of this therapeutic milk formula has enabled a significant increase in its availability: from a mere 26 tons in 1993 to more than 2,000 tons today. This increase in global production benefits more than 300,000 children annually.