The Anaemia Action Alliance is a coalition of partners assembled in support of better health through anaemia reduction.

Hosted by WHO, in collaboration with UNICEF, the Alliance brings together relevant stakeholders with wide representation across disciplines, sectors, and geographies to foster accelerated and coordinated efforts to halve the prevalence of anaemia by 2025, leading to healthier populations and lives saved.

Our goal is to meet the demands of the World Health Assembly target: Cutting the prevalence of anaemia in half by 2025 (from 2012 estimates), and reaching the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, all while contributing to healthier populations and lives saved.

With normative global agencies are calling for comprehensive action to reduce anaemia, stakeholders across sectors must work together and take responsibility for designing, implementing, and monitoring policies and programmes that address all causes of anaemia.

Despite the availability of effective interventions for preventing and treating anaemia, progress in reducing anaemia has been slow. Progress in anaemia reduction has stalled as programmes have typically focused solely on addressing anaemia due to nutritional iron deficiency, failing to adequately address other contributing causes.

In the absence of coordinated, multisectoral action addressing the root causes and risk factors for all forms of anaemia, WHO developed the  Comprehensive framework for action to accelerate anaemia reduction that recognizes the role of nutritional deficiencies, infectious diseases, obstetrics and gynecological conditions, and inherited red blood cell disorders as important causes of anaemia. Additionally, in collaboration with UNICEF, WHO established the  Anaemia Action Alliance to foster accelerated and coordinated efforts towards anaemia reduction. WHO announced these commitments at the Tokyo Nutrition for Growth Summit 2021.

The Anaemia Action Alliance builds on [each member’s individual commitment / past efforts / AREA / the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) initiative, etc.] to champion a multi-sector mobilization that can deliver a transformational change in anaemia prevention, diagnosis and management, and lead to healthier populations and lives saved.

Most efforts to reduce anaemia have primarily focused on the prevention and treatment of iron deficiency, which is critical but insufficient. In recognition of anaemia as a multisectoral issue, stakeholders across sectors must work together and take responsibility for designing, implementing, and monitoring policies and programmes that address all causes of anaemia (e.g. nutritional deficiencies, infections due to malaria and soil-transmitted helminths, gynaecological and obstetric conditions), as well as underlying risk factors (e.g. gender inequities, lower education, poverty).   

The Anaemia Action Alliance is taking this approach and building a network with diverse representation across disciplines, sectors and geographies to comprehensively address these direct causes and underlying risk factors.  Partners of the Alliance are committed to supporting national efforts – identifying the distribution, burden and context-specific causes of anaemia; understanding the barriers to progress that cut across all relevant systems [e.g. health and nutrition, food and agriculture, education, water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), social protection, and trade and industry]; identify solutions that  address the direct causes of anaemia and challenges; and research to address data and evidence gaps.

Together, Alliance partners will harness experiences and expertise from current and past anaemia reduction initiatives and other multisectoral approaches, adapting and amplifying successes through collaborating partners, advocacy and communications, and technical support.  This will magnify the recognition of anaemia as an indicator of health and development and why comprehensive, coordinated and context-specific analyses and action are critical for addressing all causes and risk factors of anaemia.