Nuflower Foods & Nutrition

  In India, Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) is amongst the top causes of deaths for children under five years of age. The current official treatment protocol for SAM in our country is facility-based approach or F-SAM, which in a lay men’s term is where SAM children with medical complications are treated at a facility. The number of SAM children with medical complications are close to 10-15% of the total SAM children, the question here is, how the rest of the 85-90% of SAM children without medical complication are treated? The answer is they are left at the community level, to be taken care by angawadi’s and at home. Why is that a problem you ask? These 85-90% of children are 9 times more likely to die as compared to a healthy child. It is very important to provide treatment for uncomplicated severe acute malnutrition at the community level as well.

  Adequate nutrition is required for physical, cognitive and overall growth of the child. India’s under-5 mortality rate is 39 per 1000 live births. This is worse than China (9 per 1000), Libya (12), Tunisia (13), Indonesia (25), Philippines (28), Bangladesh (32) and Nepal (33). Malnutrition is the major cause of India’s under 5 mortality numbers. It was the predominant risk factor of death in children under 5 years in India in 2017, accounting for 68.2% deaths, and the leading risk factor for health loss of all ages, responsible for 17.3% of the total disability adjusted life years (DALYs). [1] There are various case fatality rates reported by different experts on SAM. While the WHO estimates mortality rates to be around 10-20% [2] , some experts in India believe that it is much lower.   But, even at the lowest average case fatality suggested, at 3%, about 1.7 lakh children are at risk of death in India.     Treatment of SAM: At present the only treatment protocol in India f