During a 72nd World Health Assembly side event hosted by NCD Alliance and Resolve to Save Lives (an initiative of Vital Strategies), WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus commended the efforts of governments, civil society, and some industry stakeholders to eliminate industrially-produced trans fatty acids/trans fats (TFAs) - but emphasised that much more needs to be done and at a rapid pace of scale up.

This spotlight update on NCDA’s work to accelerate trans fat elimination shares recent activities, new resources and ways to get involved.

“While there is progress… it’s still just starting… having a deadline of 2023 to eliminate trans fat from food is a good step but it has to have serious action… the strategy should be ownership by each country, and country by country is how we will win this fight.” Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General

New Knowledge Exchange Network on Trans Fat Elimination

The Knowledge Exchange Network on Trans Fat Elimination, hosted by the NCD Alliance, is a discussion platform to share learnings, challenges and successes in implementing the WHO REPLACE action package to eliminate TFAs from the food supply. It also serves to provide peer to peer support, offering continuous technical assistance and sharing key updates and resources. The Knowledge Exchange Network is open to NCD Alliance members with an interest in trans fat elimination, sign up here.

Case studies in accelerating trans fat elimination

A new report published by NCD Alliance “Trans fat free by 2023 - case studies in trans fat elimination” presents case studies of six countries in different regions that have enacted policies to eliminate iTFAs from their food supply. The report provides examples of successful strategies for enacting and implementing TFA policies, as well as best practices and lessons learned based on the experience of policy-makers, advocates, and researchers involved in such efforts. The case studies show that there are many paths to achieve TFA elimination. Read the report here.

WHA72 side event - Nutrition Policy Action to Save Lives - Trans fat free by 2023

During NCD Alliance’s World Health Assembly side event with Resolve to Save Lives, WHO launched new REPLACE resources, which include implementation modules, global surveillance protocols, the first progress report counting down to global elimination by 2023, and a country scorecard/map. Speakers included Dr Tom Frieden of Resolve to Save Lives, Prof Shauna Downs of Rutgers University, Prof Igor Pravst of the Nutrition Institute, Slovenia, and Mr Faisal Bin Sunaid of the Food and Drug Authority of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Access the recording and learn more about the side event here. 

Strengthening capacity of civil society to secure trans fat elimination in their countries

Representatives of the Eastern Mediterranean Regional Alliance, Healthy Caribbean Coalition, Kenya NCD Alliance, Tanzania NCD Alliance, Mexico Saludhable, Heartfile, Malaysia NCD Alliance, and Healthy Latin America Coalition (CLAS) attended a two-day NCD Alliance training on TFA elimination on 22 & 23 May 2019 in Geneva. During the workshop advocates strengthened the knowledge and skills necessary to develop impactful and effective advocacy strategies and campaigns to eliminate TFAs. Click here to know nore about the training. 

NCD Trailblazers Webinar

This May 2019 webinar provided an overview of the new NCD Alliance report “Trans-fat Free by 2023 - case studies in trans fat elimination””, and showcased the work of Mexico SaludHable (Mexico) and Heartfile (Pakistan), the two NCD Alliance grantees supported  under NCD Alliance’s grant received from Resolve to Save Lives. NCD Alliance members can access the slides from the webinar and the recording password on “My NCDA Hub”. Network members will have free access to webinar recordings after 30 days. For more information click here. 

What works to eliminate trans fats from the food supply?

To promote TFA elimination, NCD Alliance and Resolve to Save Lives hosted a roundtable in January 2019 in Geneva. Dr Francesco Branca, Director of WHO’s Department of Nutrition, presented WHO’s REPLACE package, developed to support countries in eliminating TFAs from the food supply by 2023. Experts presented on the TFA elimination policies of Argentina, Canada and Denmark, discussed the role of academia and civil society, and highlighted some challenges and solutions to  implementing TFA regulations. For more information click here. 

Role of civil society in the elimination of TFAs

Hosted by LINKS, the NCD Alliance presented a webinar in March 2019 to discuss the role of civil society organisations in the elimination of TFAs, with a focus on Mexico and Argentina.  Moderated by Dr Tom Frieden, President of Resolve to Save Lives, the webinar featured Katie Dain (CEO of NCD Alliance), Lorena Allemandi (Director of Healthy Nutrition Policies, Interamerican Heart Foundation of Argentina), and Erick Antonio Ochoa (Director at Salud Justa and representative for public policies at Mexico SaludHable).

Read more & watch here.