INTRODUCTION: The purpose of this study was to analyze how the implementation process and carrying out of the Nutritional Surveillance System (or - Information System on children nutrition status) came to pass in municipalities of the State of Bahia, where a supplementary feeding program ("leite é saúde", delivering milk and soy oil) had been established implemented. METODS: From 1997 to 1998, a retrospective documental research was performed, including visits, observation and at semi-structured interviews with health professionals. Thirty-five municipalities out of 44 visited had already implemented the program; 43% of those had performed nutrition diagnosis at the start-up of the feeding and nutrition program. It was not possible to obtain information about Nutritional Surveillance System in 6% of the municipalities. RESULTS: The Nutritional Surveillance Systems had been implemented in 22% of the towns; 34% had it only partially implemented and 38% had not implemented it yet. The main deficiency found in the health service provided in municipalities that had the partially implemented stemmed from the very lack of use of Nutritional Surveillance System's information for planning further actions. CONCLUSION: The Information System on children nutrition status reproduced the problems already known to exist in regard to other information systems. The requirement to implement Nutritional Surveillance System in order to establish a covenant did not accomplish to assure the actual implementation of the Information System. Since the program did not make use of information on epidemiologic nutrition profile in order to detect and solve problems in feeding and nutrition practices, it failed to introduce further practical changes.
nutritional surveillance; nutrition policy; information systems
