Availability of national policies, programmes, and survey-based coverage data to track nutrition interventions in South Asia.

Progress to improve nutrition among women, infants and children in South Asia has fallen behind the pace needed to meet established global targets. Renewed political commitment and monitoring of nutrition interventions are required to improve coverage and quality of care. Our study aimed to assess the availability of national nutrition policies, programmes, and coverage data of nutrition interventions for women, children, and adolescents in eight countries in South Asia.

Unequal coverage of nutrition and health interventions for women and children in seven countries.

Objective: To examine inequalities and opportunity gaps in co-coverage of health and nutrition interventions in seven countries.

Methods: We used data from the most recent (2015-2018) demographic and health surveys of mothers with children younger than 5 years in Afghanistan ( = 19 632), Bangladesh ( = 5051), India ( = 184 641), Maldives ( = 2368), Nepal ( 3998), Pakistan ( = 8285) and Sri Lanka ( = 7138). We estimated co-coverage for a set of eight health and eight nutrition interventions and assessed within-country inequalities in co-coverage by wealth and geography.