BSNA welcomes the start of Home Artificial Nutrition (HAN) Week (5-11 August 2024). This is an opportunity to raise awareness about these essential treatments - covering parenteral nutrition, enteral nutrition and oral nutritional supplements for people at home and in the community. A campaign led by the support group PINNT (Patients on Intravenous and Naso-gastric Nutrition Treatment), HAN week includes a variety of activities and sharing of stories of using medical foods and parenteral nutrition.

For those that need it, medical nutrition can be life changing, and for some people it can be life saving.

BSNA members work with partners across the NHS and organisations such as PINNT to ensure all patients have appropriate access to the products they need, so the theme of this year’s HAN Week – ‘working together’ – is key to meeting patient needs.

BSNA represents the manufacturers of medical foods – or foods for special medical purposes (FSMPs) – in the UK. Medical foods are specialist foods designed to help meet the nutritional needs of patients who are affected by or at risk of malnutrition due to a disease, disorder or medical condition that makes it difficult for their nutritional needs to be satisfied through the consumption of other foods alone.

Patients who may require additional nutritional support could include those in intensive care, those with dysphagia, kidney disease, metabolic diseases, cancer, dementia, certain genetic conditions or injury – some of these patients require longer term nutritional support at home.

Supporting those patients using home enteral feeds, PINNT provides mutual support and understanding to hundreds of adults and children and their families adapting to life on home artificial nutrition.

Increasing awareness and understanding of artificial nutrition and medical foods is vital to ensuring patients receive the care they need. Recognising this, BSNA produced two videos on medical foods and parenteral nutrition products, to explain what they are, what they are used for and why they are so important. You can watch the videos below here:

https://bsna.co.uk/pages/about-specialist-nutrition/medical-oral-nutritional-supplements

https://bsna.co.uk/pages/about-specialist-nutrition/parenteral-nutrition