Nutrition in Emergencies Course

Our Nutrition in Emergencies Course fills an important knowledge gap for many UK-based clinicians with limited experience in humanitarian contexts. 

You will gain the skills and information you’ll need when deploying into a humanitarian health emergency. While acute malnutrition is only a small part of wider nutrition-related issues, this particular course is essential to prepare you to assess and manage malnutrition as part of UK-Med’s commitment to delivering world-class healthcare.

 By undertaking this course:

• You’ll learn how to diagnose, refer and treat cases of acute malnutrition
• You’ll be able to integrate infant and young child feeding into your activities
• You’ll be able to diagnose or refer cases of micronutrient deficiencies.

This course is blended, which means you’ll learn in different ways. You’ll start by undertaking UNICEF’s online self-directed course, Introduction to Nutrition, which takes around thirty minutes to complete. 

Next, you’ll take part in live online sessions. In total, you’ll cover four modules which each will take three hours.

You’re also expected to undertake approximately two hours of self-directed learning in between each of the live modules, to a total of six hours of independent learning.

This course is expected to take approximately eighteen hours. The group size will be between ten and 20 participants.

You’ll already be an experienced clinician in your day-to-day role but you’ll be unfamiliar with working in a humanitarian health context where acute malnutrition is a common cause of mortality. You’ll already have been accepted onto UK-Med’s Register and will have completed the Core Training Pathway. You’ll be interested in deploying with UK-Med to a humanitarian emergency.

The key topics you’ll learn about in the Nutrition in Emergencies Course are:

• Protocols for the management of acute malnutrition
• The pathophysiology of acute malnutrition 
• The feeding of infants and young children including the advantages of breastfeeding and disadvantages of artificial feeding
• The basics of The International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes
• Supporting and counselling breastfeeding mothers and managing the inclusion of non-breastfed infants
• Micronutrient deficiencies and issues around HIV, cholera, Ebola and COVID-19.