Guideline: Intermittent Iron Supplementation in Preschool and School-Age Children

Overview

This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on the intermittent use of iron supplements for preschool and school-age children as a public health intervention to improve iron status and reduce the risk of childhood iron deficiency anaemia.

The guideline will help Member States and their partners in their efforts to make informed decisions on the appropriate nutrition actions to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, in particular, the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1), achievement of universal primary education (MDG 2) and reduction of child mortality (MDG 4). The guideline is intended for a wide audience including policy makers, their expert advisers, and technical and programme staff at organizations involved in the design, implementation and scaling-up of nutrition actions for public health.

Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Financial support
• Summary
• Scope and purpose
• Background
• Summary of evidence
• Recommendation
• Remarks
• Dissemination, adaptation and implementation
  • Dissemination
  • Adaptation and implementation
  • Monitoring and evaluation of guideline implementation
• Implications for future research
• Guideline development process
  • Advisory groups
  • Scope of the guideline, evidence appraisal and decision-making
• Management of conflicts of interest
• Plans for updating the guideline
• References
• Annex 1 GRADE “Summary of findings” tables
• Annex 2 WHO Steering Committee for Nutrition Guidelines Development
• Annex 3 Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) – Micronutrients, WHO Secretariat and external resource experts
• Annex 4 External Experts and Stakeholders Panel – Micronutrients
• Annex 5 Questions in Population, Intervention, Control, Outcomes (PICO) format
• Annex 6 Summary of NUGAG members' considerations for determining the strength of the recommendation

A WHO guideline is any document, whatever its title, containing WHO recommendations about health interventions, whether they be clinical, public health or policy interventions. A recommendation provides information about what policy-makers, health-care providers or patients should do. It implies a choice between different interventions that have an impact on health and that have ramifications for the use of resources. All publications containing WHO recommendations are approved by the WHO Guidelines Review Committee.

Suggested citation:

WHO. Guideline: Intermittent iron supplementation in preschool and school-age children. Geneva, World Health Organization, 2011.

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