Chile Programa Nacional de Alimentacion Complementaria

Chile's Programa Nacional de Alimentacion Complementaria, the National Complementary Feeding Program known as PNAC, was created in 1954 under President Carlos Ibanez del Campo, two years after the creation of the country's National Health Service, with the aim of combating malnutrition and reducing infant mortality by distributing powdered milk as part of the country's maternal and child health programs. It was originally intended for every newborn in Chile and for pregnant women, nursing mothers and children up to six years old, at a time when protein-calorie malnutrition affected an estimated 37 percent of the population in 1960. The program was reformulated in the 1980s to concentrate its resources on the most vulnerable groups, malnourished or at-risk mothers and children, nursing infants, healthy newborns and preschoolers, and in 1979 the Central Supply Office of the National Health Service, CENABAST, took over its technical coordination, procurement and distribution. PNAC is credited as a major contributor to Chile's sharp decline in child malnutrition, from 37 percent at the end of the 1950s to just 3.5 percent by 2012, making it one of the longest-running maternal and child nutrition programs in Latin America.