Is a child at risk of relapsing after the 6-week treatment?
The incidence of malnutrition in children peaks during hunger seasons (when an old crop has run out and a new crop is not yet ready for harvest), in times of conflict, displacement, and drought, and during personal crisis (such as loss of a parent). A six-week treatment of RUTF is generally enough to carry a child through these periods and back to healthy development. Children are, however, at high risk of relapsing if the conditions of poverty and crisis have not been alleviated. To prevent relapse, once children reach their target weight they are often admitted to supplementary feeding programs for three months (typically using corn-soy blend). Nutriset has also developed ready-to-use supplementary food (RUSF) products aimed at prevention, like Plumpy’doz®. Additionally, they have developed social marketing schemes to enable families to have access to quality nutritional supplements according to their purchasing power, even if no emergency NGO programs are in place.
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