A key thematic focus of this issue of Field Exchange is Humanitarian Reform. There have been many reviews and evaluations concerning the level of progress made since the reform process was officially launched some five years ago. The detailed and systematic 'state of the system' review by ALNAP (see research section) found that the 'formal' international humanitarian system (United Nations (UN), international non-governmental organisations and Red Cross) has grown significantly in financial and human resource terms in recent years. Progress was found

Four of the six field articles in this issue of Field Exchange endeavour to demonstrate some form of intervention impact. The programmes are all very different; nutrition supplementation of HIV positive individuals in Zambia, community based nutrition programming in Bangladesh, a voucher scheme for fresh fruit and vegetables in a Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya and a joint cash and food programme in drought affected Swaziland. The programmes are either novel, i.e. the voucher scheme in Dadaab, are pilots contributing to a growing body of evidence, i.e. Zambia

Issue 34 of Field Exchange has a special focus on infant and young child feeding in emergencies (IFE) and is dedicated to the memory of Tom Marchione.

Leading the IFE 'show' is an extended field article from the UNICEF team in Indonesia, sharing their IFE experiences in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2006. On reading the piece you may well get that 'deja-vu' feeling - mass arrival and untargeted distribution of infant formula, milk powder, and commercial baby foods to mothers and children. Monitoring was almost non-existent. Coordination proved a big

This issue of Field Exchange features four field articles about community based therapeutic care of the severely malnourished, a type of programming that is increasingly being rolled out by humanitarian agencies.

The article by Josephine Querubin from ACF-USA is about a home based treatment (HT) programme in Upper Nile and Bahr el Ghazal in southern Sudan, introduced following drought and a large returnee influx. HT was adopted as previous experiences of using the centre based therapeutic feeding model had been poor with high defaulter rates

This special issue of Field Exchange focuses on the food aid component of HIV related programming and was made possible through additional funding from DFID RSA. How the ENN have gathered field material for this issue marks a significant departure from our usual approach, in that a consultant (Mary Corbett) was taken on as a kind of roving researcher/correspondent.

Mary visited five countries over the course of six weeks (Malawi, Zambia, Kenya and Uganda and South Africa) to meet with a wide variety of agency staff implementing HIV programming

ENN Special Supplement Series, No. 2, November 2004

Community-based Therapeutic Care (CTC)

By Kate Golden (Concern Ethiopia) and Tanya Khara (Valid International)

ENN Special Supplement Series, No. 2, November 2004

By Kate Sadler (Valid International) and Anna Taylor (SC-UK)

North Darfur state lies 1000 km to the west of Khartoum. It is an area the size of France but is inhabited by only 1.4 million people. The state has considerable variation in vegetation, ranging from desert in the north (average annual rainfall of less than 100 mm), to arable land in the south (average annual rainfall of 100 - 300 mm).