Severe Acute Malnutrition

Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) affects 20 million children under five years of age each year and contributes to 1 million child deaths per year. Moderate acute malnutrition contributes more to the overall burden of disease, as it affects many more children. As a nutritionist, these statistics are devastating, and largely go unrecognized by many working in global health. Why is this? Often, children who are malnourished suffer from complications of other diseases and nutrition is often an orphan – misunderstood in diagnosis and treatment. Nutrition is often seen as “complicated.” It is not totally untrue - in the past, treating malnutrition has been cumbersome, requiring hospital services and complex medical treatment. However, in the last few years the game has changed.
An innovative community-led public health model to address acute malnutrition in developing countries has been established called Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM). The community-based approach engages the community to detect signs of SAM early by sensitizing communities and subsequent active case finding, and provides treatment for those without medical complications with ready-to-use therapeutic foods (RUTF) or other nutrient-dense foods at home. If properly combined with clinical care for those malnourished children with medical complications and implemented on a large scale, community-based management of severe acute malnutrition could prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. The CMAM combines three treatment modalities, inpatient therapeutic (IP), outpatient therapeutic (OTP) and supplementary feeding (SFP) according to the clinical and anthropometric characteristics at presentation. CMAM can maximize treatment by improving coverage, access, and cost-effectiveness of treatment.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/blog/2010/04/16/treating-children-who-suffer-from-acute-malnutrition-%E2%80%93-one-text-message-at-a-time/