The Effect of Integrated Prevention and Treatment on Child Malnutrition and Health in Mali: a Cluster Randomized Intervention Study

Summary

Globally, child undernutrition is the underlying cause for 3.1 million deaths of children younger than 5 years. 18.7 million children under five years of age suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) and an additional 33 million children suffer from moderate acute malnutrition, and are at risk of developing SAM

In Sub-Saharan Africa, there is often poor integration between programs to treat child acute malnutrition and programs that focus on the prevention of acute and chronic undernutrition - resulting in many missed opportunities for using prevention platforms to screen and refer SAM children, or for using screening and referral platforms to provide prevention services.

This project will address two critical gaps related to the integration of preventive and treatment programs: 1) screening and treatment of MAM/SAM have not yet been systematically integrated into routine health-center visits or mainstreamed into community outreach programs; and 2) screening programs do not offer any preventive services for those children found not to be suffering from MAM/SAM at the time of screening; mothers of children identified as non-MAM/SAM case are usually sent home without receiving any health or nutrition inputs and as a result, may fail to come back for screening because they do not see any tangible benefit associated with their participation in the screening. This project will specifically address these gaps by assessing the effect of an integrated approach consisting of higher screening coverage and preventive Behavior Change Communication (BCC) + Small-Quantity Lipid-based Nutrient supplementation (SQ-LNS) on both prevention and treatment of child undernutrition.

Conditions

• Child Acute Malnutrition

Interventions

DIETARY_SUPPLEMENT

Small-Quantity Lipid-based nutrient supplement

A monthly dose of SQ-LNS (31 sachets of 20g) will be distributed to mothers attending counselling sessions

BEHAVIORAL

Child's health and nutrition topics

Monthly group counselling meetings organized at village level. Caregivers of participating children are invited to attend monthly counselling meetings that treat topics on child nutrition, health, hygiene and good sanitary practices. During these visits children are also screened for acute malnutrition measuring arm circumference.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Helen Keller International

  collaborator OTHER

• International Food Policy Research Institute

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Marie Ruel, PhD · International Food Policy Research Institute

• Harouna Konde, MD · Helen Keller International - Mali

• Lieven Huybregts, PhD · International Food Policy Research Institute

• Agnes Le Port · International Food Policy Research Institute

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

6 Months

Max Age

23 Months

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2015-02-01

Primary Completion

2017-05-05

Completion

2017-09-01

Countries

• Mali