Severe Acute Malnutrition Treatment
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.
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