Recovery Time from Severe Acute Malnutrition and Development of Complementary Food Supplement For Affected Ethiopian Children

Abstract

Background: Severe acute mal nutrition (SAM) among children still remains the major problem in Ethiopia. The shortening of the SAM recovery time by applying appropriate dietary means during treatment and also after recovery, can save huge sums of public health spending. Objectives: Determining the recovery time of SAM affected children and developing complementary food supplement (CFS). Methods: Hospital based retrospective cohort study was carried out on 401 SAM affected children. A structured and pre tested data abstraction form was used for data collection. The data were entered into Epi info and exported to SPSS for analysis. All of the nutritional properties of the developed product in three different ratios of the flours of maize, soybean and powder of moringaolifera leaves were assessed and compared to the control (100% maize). Results: The median recovery time was 16 days. There was a significant increase in protein, mineral and beta carotene content with increasing level of Moringaolifera leaf powder in the CFS. Conclusion: To increase the rate of recovery from sever acute malnutrition and also to prevent relapsing, moringa incorporated cheaper complementary fod supplements could be recommended for SAM affected children.

Length of stay to recover from severe acute malnutrition and associated factors among under-five years children admitted to public hospitals in Aksum, Ethiopia

“…The overall rate of recovery from SAM was found to be 56%, that is consistent with findings from Debrebrhan University that revealed 55.9% rate of recovery [37]. It is significantly higher than that of Ayder hospital (11) other similar studies from Bahirdar [13,35], Ghana [20] and Yemen [36]. Nevertheless, it is by greater margin below the minimum international standards [15], in comparison with other study findings in Ethiopia [1,8,24,25,[27][28][29][30][31][32] and similar reports from India, Malawi and Uganda [34,[37][38][39] as well.…”

“…It is similar with the findings of two studies done in Ethiopia [25,26] and one conducted in Nigeria [40]. But the mortality rate is greater than that of some studies done in Ethiopia [11,13,35], India [37,38], Ghana [20] and Yemen [36]. This could be due to lack of close follow up of patients with strict adherence to the national or international SAM management protocols and socioeconomic differences in the different areas.…”

“…The median LOS till recovery from SAM was estimated to be 15 days (95% CI: 14.1, 15.9), which is in the acceptable range of international standards set by the SPHERE project [15]. This is similar with the findings from institution based researches in Bahirdar [13,35] that reported 16 days of recovery time. But this finding is far less than the report from Sidama zone Shebedino district of southern Ethiopia [29] which found the median LOS of 36 days.…”

“…This might be due to the relatively higher rate of transfer out to nearby health facility, which probably would be to prevent patient overload since one of the study area (AKU-CSH) is the only referral hospital in this particular study area. Almost a quarter (22.2%) of patients were transferred out to nearby health facility that is above other recently reported study findings in Ethiopia [1,13,25,27,35] Ghana [20], Uganda [34] and Yemen [36].…”

Recovery rate and its predictors among children with severe acute malnutrition in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: A retrospective cohort study

“…This is in-line with a study done by Fikrie et al [24]. The median duration of recovery in this study was higher than the median duration of recovery of other Ethiopian studies [16,17,20,26,27,36], but lower than some other studies done at the various stabilization centers in the country [25,30,31]. These variations could be due to differences in…”