The Quality Assurance Framework Network for Assessment of Nutrition, Africa (QAFANA) has established a centre of excellence in Ghana.

The centre seeks to create a quality assurance framework for proper assessment of nutritional status.

QAFANA is an initiative by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partnership with Southampton University powered by the international collaboration on network in relation to cancer (ICONIC), tasked to develop and implement a quality assurance framework for assessment of nutrition across sub-Saharan Africa.

This initiative is focused on ensuring quality in nutritional status assessment across Sub-saharan Africa.

Speaking at the 2023 Conference of Nutrition and Dietetics symposium by the Ghana Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in Kumasi, public health nutritionist at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Prof. Reginald Adjetey Annan believes this will help improve quality of data collection.

“Nutrition assessment is a key activity undertaken by nutritionists and some who are not even nutritionists, and it’s used for clinical diagnosis, it’s used for monitoring treatment and it’s used for population surveillance.

“But most at times we are not sure about the quality of data that we receive and even how well it’s been gathered or whether it’s reproducible,” he said

Currently, QAFANA has provided training for some nutrition students at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Health and Allied Sciences.

Associate Professor in Human Nutrition, University of Southampton, Stephen Alan Wootton hinted the exercise will be extended to other universities in Ghana.

“By the end of the year, we’ll have 5 universities working together to deliver this programme.

“This is not a one-stop shop, it’ll probably take 3 to 5 years to do this properly. My hope is by working together, we can all take a bit of the load,” he’s optimistic.