Ghana is Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) to combat nutritional deficiencies including IDD, AllAfrica.comreported December 12. "SUN is designed to raise awareness and investments in improving nutrition during the critical period of a child's life, which is from pregnancy to two years of age or the first 1000 days of life" and is being run by Ghana's National Development Planning Commission. Eighty percent of Ghanaian children under age 5 and 30% of the women in the country suffer from nutritional deficiencies.

Ghana's First Lady, Dr. Mrs. Ernestina Naadu Mills performed the launching of SUN at a ceremony in Accra and stressed that nutrition has a huge impact on national development therefore as we scale up nutrition actions with emphasis on the first 1000 days window of opportunity let us rise with the SUN and unite to end hunger and malnutrition. She explained:

"Women of childbearing age need to prepare physiologically to go through a successful pregnancy and give birth safely. It is hoped that significant progress will be made by mid-June 2013 which will be 1,000 days from September 2010 when the SUN movement was launched globally."