CEDAW/C/1996/3/Add.1 English Page 4 demands for energy and iron imposed by menstruation, childbearing and lactation. Malnutrition also contributes to increased morbidity and death from a variety of infectious and chronic diseases. Anaemia, which affects some 450 million women aged between 15 and 49 years, is the most widespread and neglected nutritional deficiency disease in the world today. It is largely a problem for women, particularly during pregnancy and lactation. The WHO Nutrition Programme is working to implement a range of interventions targeting anaemia, including modification of dietary patterns, alternative treatment schedules and delivery systems for iron supplementation to overcome problems such as lack of compliance and logistic difficulties, and food fortification. 9. A collaborative project with the International Food Policy Research Institute will examine whether sex and age biases exist on intra-household resource allocation. An update of the 1986 WHO and United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) publication on the health implications of sex discrimination in childhood is being prepared, focusing on data from the last 10 years. More work is needed to identify strategies to address this concern. 10. Improving women's nutritional status, in particular removing the burden of chronic fatigue that accompanies anaemia, will be a vital step in breaking the cycle of neglect and ill-health. The commitments made in the Plan of Action on Nutrition of the International Conference on Nutrition and reaffirmed in Beijing, including a reduction world wide of severe and moderate malnutrition among children under the age of 5 by one half of 1990 levels by the year 2000, giving special attention to the gender gap in nutrition, and a reduction in iron deficiency anaemia in girls and women by one third of the 1990 levels by the year 2000, should be used for monitoring progress towards improving women's nutritional status. Reproductive health 11. Recent United Nations conferences such as the International Conference on Population and Development, the World Social Summit, held in Copenhagen in March 1995, and the Fourth World Conference on Women agreed on a number of fundamental principles and broad plans of action in the area of health and development. In particular they affirmed that development policies should improve the health and well-being of individuals. They also emphasized quality of life goals and paid particular attention to gender equity and the need to improve the status of women. The International Conference on Population and Development proposed and the others endorsed a broad reproductive health framework, which includes the regulation of fertility and sexual health and advocated comprehensive reproductive health programmes to be made available through the primary health-care system no later than the year 2015. Success and sustainability will depend on integrating the perspectives of women and men into the development and implementation of reproductive health policies and programmes. 12. The importance of reproductive health has been recognized within WHO by the recent creation of the family and reproductive health programme. WHO will continue to work with Governments to implement integrated reproductive health programmes reflecting the broader approach to reproductive health, the empowerment of women and equitable gender relations as endorsed by the /...