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Severe acute malnutrition is a life-threatening condition requiring urgent treatment.
The prevalence of severe acute malnutrition is estimated at around 2% in the least-developed countries and 1% in other developing countries [UNICEF Global Database on Child Malnutrition. 2005], which translates to about 20 million severely malnourished children in the world at all time.
The treatment of severe acute malnutrition is based on 3 phases and requires specific products to answer the particular needs of extremely weakened organisms.
Patients without an adequate appetite and/or a major medical complication are initially admitted to a hospital or a therapeutic feeding centre (TFC) for Phase 1 treatment.
During this phase patients are given a milk formula called F75. Rapid weight gain at this stage is dangerous, that is why F75 is formulated so that patients do not gain weight during this stage while they recover normal metabolic function and nutrition-electrolytic balance.
A common medical complication in phase 1 is dehydration, which should preferably be treated orally.
Compact for Life manufactures ReSoMal , an oral rehydration salt (ORS) that is blended with water and given regularly in small amounts until all signs of dehydration have disappeared.
A transition phase has been introduced for patients in hospitals/TFC because a sudden change to the phase 2 diet, before physiological function is restored, can be dangerous and lead to electrolyte disequilibrium.
During this phase the patients start to gain weight slowly as a fortified milk formula called F-100 or a Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) is introduced.
Whenever patients have more appetite and no major medical complication they enter Phase 2. Many patients arrive to the hospital/TFC with a fairly good appetite and are admitted directly into Phase 2. During this phase, patients need a therapeutic food that will enable quick and sustainable weight gain (more than 8 g/kg/day).
Traditionally patients in phase 2 were kept in hospitals/TFC and given the therapeutic WHO F-100 fortified milk powder. But this way of treating severe malnutrition is not always the most effective in developing countries where caretakers have to travel long distances to access medical care, leaving their other children unattended.
Lately, a new approach to phase 2 called Community Therapeutic Care (CTC) has proven to be extremely effective and is becoming the new standard. The central principle of this approach is to detect severe acute malnutrition before the life-threatening symptoms and treat malnourished children in their homes, rather than having them travel for miles for help.
But F-100 cannot be used here because it needs to be prepared by trained personnel and presents a risk of contamination due to its high water content. The right kind of malnutrition food used in CTC is therefore a RUTF based on the F-100 formula which does not need any preparation and contains under 4% of water, making it the ideal tool for home treatment.
Compact for Life is producing two types of RUTF which can be used both in hospitals/TFC and at home (CTC):
BP-100™, a compressed RUTF with long shelf life, whose formula has been proven successful in many occasions (see the study in Sierra Leone and Burma).
eeZeePaste NUT™ (to be launched in early 2009), a semi liquid RUTF based on peanut whose taste and consistence is ideal for the malnourished children.
