Analytic Module to Improve Nutrition Screening for Children Under-five Years at Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Facilities

Abstract

Background: For years, we have been witnessing malnutrition taking the life of almost half of all children under-five years in the world. Additionally, malnutrition has many effects on individuals including mortality and disability, which are temporary ones, and low intellectual ability and low productive performance, which are permanent. National and international organizations have been struggling to combat malnutrition and its effects. Identification of malnourished children and the provision of proper treatment thereafter are important to steps be taken. Various nutrition screening and assessment tools have been developed and are used to facilitate the process of identifying malnourished children. Most tools are developed for specific purposes such as identifying nutritional status or to identify the need for nutrition intervention, and for a specific setting such as community, hospital or home care. Due to the diverse nature of nutrition screening, there has been an unnecessary struggle to develop nutrition screening tools for individual communities. In this paper, we propose and design a generic but reliable and effective nutrition screening system for performing nutrition screening and establish extent. Method: Unified Modelling Language were used for system analysis and design. PhP and MySQL were used for system development. Results: In this paper, the design of the nutrition screening system is described. The system will facilitate nutrition screening and assessment. Nutrition screening and assessment are very essential processes for effective malnutrition management. The design combines nutrition screening and assessment because it is of advantage to have a nutrition screening process combined with nutrition assessment process as it enables identification of not only malnutrition or potential malnutrition risk but also evaluation of nutritional status. Conclusion: When used this system will quicken and perfect nutrition screening process, improve the productivity of nurses, and enhance utilization of anthropometric and other clinical data.