UNITED NATIONS, June 8 (UPI) -- U.N. agencies say they have an innovative approach to tackling severe acute malnutrition, a problem facing about 20 million children under the age of 5 years around the globe annually.
Most of the SAM children live in south Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa, with roughly a million children dying of the condition a year, the World Health Organization said.
U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe Friday told reporters a recent Food and Agriculture Organization assessment, conducted in five settlements of internally displaced persons in Somalia's Baidoa District, found nearly one in five displaced children suffers from acute malnutrition. Preliminary findings from three other nutritional assessments in the Gedo region found similar numbers.
U.N. agencies and programs, such as WHO, the World Food Program, the U.N. Children's Fund and the U.N. Standing Committee on Nutrition, say the new method combines community-based care with traditional hospital treatment.
In a joint statement Thursday, the agencies said the approach involves timely detection of SAM in the community and provision of treatment for those without medical complications with ready-to-use therapeutic foods or other nutrient-dense foods at home.
"Severe acute malnutrition is defined by a very low weight for height, by visible severe wasting, or by the presence of nutritional edema," they stated. "In children aged 6-59 months, an arm circumference less than four-and-a-third inches is also indicative of severe acute malnutrition.
"If properly combined with a facility-based approach 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 statement said.
Severe acute malnutrition can be a direct cause of child death, or it can act as an indirect cause by dramatically increasing the case fatality rate in children suffering from such common childhood illnesses as diarrhea and pneumonia.
"The 20 million children under 5 in the world today who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition urgently need treatment," said Margaret Chan, director-general of WHO. "This integrated approach should provide a new impetus."
The agencies said three-quarters of children with severe acute malnutrition who have good appetites and no medical complications can receive home treatment through highly fortified, ready-to-use therapeutic foods, known as RUTFs.
Rich in nutrients and energy, RUTFs are tasty, soft and can be eaten by children over 6 months without adding water, thus reducing the risk of bacterial infection, the agencies said. They allow for severely malnourished children to be treated at home and do not require refrigeration.
As a further benefit, the technology to produce the food is relatively simple and can be duplicated in countries with high SAM rates.
"Ready-to-use therapeutic foods have proven very effective in addressing severe acute malnutrition in children," said Ann Veneman, UNICEF's executive director.
The treatment, according to the agencies' statement, is to feed children a RUTF until they have gained adequate weight. In some settings it may be possible to construct an appropriate therapeutic diet using locally available nutrient-dense foods with added micronutrient supplements.
However, this approach requires careful monitoring because it is very hard achieve the adequate amount of nutrients.
On a large scale, this approach could save hundreds of thousands of lives annually and has already been shown to bolster survival rates for children in countries facing emergencies such as Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger and Sudan. It is hoped the method will spread to severely malnourished children in non-emergency situations as well.
Many families, especially in the poorest countries where the majority of affected children live, do not have easy access to health facilities where children are traditionally referred for in-patient treatment to receive special milk-based diets.
Additionally, many families cannot leave their homes for weeks while their children are being treated in hospitals, and the youngsters are also vulnerable to infections due to their weakened immune systems and also because of crowded hospital conditions.
"With this new approach, we have the right product composition to save millions of young lives; this is an example of the new technology and capacity which bring us closer to achieving the first (U.N.) Millennium Development Goal," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said, referring to the aim of eradicating extreme hunger and poverty by 2015.
