Stunting has remained the nutrition condition of public health concern affecting one in three children under the five years Zimbabwe. Causes of stunting are multiple and poor infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices are among the top factors associated with stunting. IYCF indicators in Zimbabwe are not performing very well with 61% of children 0 to 5 months being exclusively breastfed, and only 7% of children 6 to 23 months receiving minimum acceptable diet (MAD). The care group approach been piloted in 5 districts to promote and influence behaviour change towards uptake of optimal IYCF practices. The paper assesses progress made in the implementation of the approach after six months of implementation. Results show that implementation of the care group approach, with appropriate coordination structures at community level, yields considerable improvement in health, IYCF, and water and sanitation hygiene (WASH) behaviours and practices. Community level initiatives like income generating activities, food production, and cooking demonstrations are proving to be the sustainability pillars for the care group approach. Conclusively, with proper leadership and coordination, care groups help to affect behaviour change in improving the health, nutrition and caring practices for children.

Introduction Zimbabwe experienced the negative effects of the devastating cyclone Idai which affected several districts in the country, and the drought due to low rainfall that has affected the whole country. As a result of these catastrophes, the food and nutrition security situation in the country has deteriorated. For this reason, we carried out a rapid assessment of the health facilities in 19 sampled high global acute malnutrition and high food insecurity districts from the ten provinces of Zimbabwe to ascertain the preparedness of the facilities to respond to drought effects. Methods we conducted a rapid nutritional assessment in 19 purposely selected districts with highest rates of global acute malnutrition from the 10 provinces of Zimbabwe. From these districts, we selected a district hospital and a rural health facility with high number of acute malnutrition cases. We adapted and administered the WHO recommended checklist (Multi-Cluster/Sector Initial Rapid Assessment (MIRA) as the assessment tool. We used STATA to generate frequencies, and proportions. Results about 94% (16/19) of the districts had less than 50% health workers trained to manage acute malnutrition. A total of 26% (5/19) of the district hospitals and 32% (6/19) of the primary health care facilities were not admitting according to integrated management of acute malnutrition (IMAM) protocol. Twelve districts (63%) had none of their staff trained in infant and young child feeding (IYCF), 58% (11/19) had no staff trained in growth monitoring and 63% (12/19) of the districts had no trained staff in baby friendly hospital initiative (BFHI). A total of 60% of the provinces did not have combined mineral vitamin mix stocks, 80% had no resomal stocks, 20% did not have micronutrient powder stocks and 30% had no ready to use supplementary food stocks in all their assessed facilities. Fifty percent (50%) of the health facilities were not adequately stocked with growth monitoring cards. Manicaland had the least (20%) number of health facility with a registration system to notify cases of malnutrition. Conclusion we concluded that the Zimbabwe health delivery system is not adequately prepared to respond to the effects of the current drought as most health workers had inadequate capacity to manage acute malnutrition, the nutrition surveillance was weak and inadequate stocks of commodities and anthropometric equipment was noted. Following this, health workers from six of ten provinces were trained on management of acute malnutrition, procurement of some life -saving therapeutic and supplementary foods was done. We further recommend food fortification as a long-term plan, active screening for early identification of malnutrition cases and continuous training of health workers.