Preventing children from dying of hunger has a scalable, proven solution
Our solution is to simplify treatment to reach every child. That means a radically simpler, scalable treatment approach that treats all forms of acute malnutrition with a single food product at a single point of care, using simplified diagnosis and dosing.
5 steps to simplify the current system
1
One food product
Treat all acutely malnourished children with one food product rather than a different product for each form of acute malnourishment.
2
One point of service
Treat children with both forms of acute malnourishment at every point of service, rather than splitting them into different locations.
3
Community health workers
Utilize community health workers to reach children in remote, war-torn or climate change-impacted areas so that families don’t have to travel long distances to get to formal health facilities.
4
Diagnosis based on a simple tape measure
Diagnosis of acute malnutrition using a simple tape marked red, yellow and green to measure the arm of a child. The upper arm of an acutely malnourished child is less than 1.6 inches wide—the size of two adult fingers.
5
Simplified dosing using a simple tape measure
Determine how much of the food product is distributed to the child based on simplified dosing instead of carrying heavy weights to dose based on a complex ratio of the child’s weight and height.
Underscoring this approach is our belief that all children with acute malnourishment should receive life-saving treatment, and that simplification is the most cost-effective way to reach all of them.
Backed by extensive gold-standard research
The World Health Organization released guidelines in 2023 that supported several of the five key elements of simplification, including using one food product, community health workers and diagnosing based on a simple tape measure.
Our groundbreaking research clearly demonstrates that simplification is safe, more cost-effective and enables greater reach to all children. The Combined Protocol for Acute Malnutrition Study (ComPAS) unifies the treatment of severe and moderate malnutrition using only one protocol, one product and one program.
Our research of over 25,000 children showed:
The simplified protocol is highly effective. Our treatment resulted in 92% overall recovery with a mean length of stay (the amount of time a child is in treatment) of 40 days.
Community health worker (CHW) delivery is just as effective and makes treatment more accessible. CHW-led treatments had similar recovery rates as formal health workers (94%). We can expand access to care by empowering CHWs to treat children in their communities, without requiring travel to distant health facilities, especially in humanitarian areas where travel may be physically dangerous or impacted by floods or other weather events.
Simplified approaches save money. We observed that the total costs per child with severe malnutrition treated was 21% less with a simplified versus a standard protocol.