Abstract
Ethiopia has long history of food insecurity and nutritional problems affecting large proportion of the population caused by successive droughts. Despite of different interventions to tackle the problem there is no explicit data showing treatment outcome of the children generally in Ethiopia and specifically in the study area. Institutional based general prospective cohort study was employed. The respondents were 332 children of 6-59 months age admitted to Outpatient therapeutic program (OTP) providing health facilities and their mothers /caregivers from January-April, 2012. Data was analyzed using SPSS. Kaplan Meir (KM) curve, log rank test and proportional hazards Cox model were performed. The bivariate and adjusted hazard rate and its 95%Confidence interval were estimated. Out of 332 children, 255 children (76.8%) have recovered. Fifty-eight children (17.5%) defaulted from the program. Factors significantly associated with good recovery were children whose mothers travel below 2 hours to the health facility ,male children ,children with baseline WFH of >60% and children from mothers whose age at first marriage is >18 years. Efforts to trace defaulters from OTP should be emphasized and strengthened. To overcome the high length of stay and low weight gain among patients in the OTP, stakeholders need to consider and give emphasis to the identified determinants of the treatment outcomes to achieve fully effective and sustainable program. Key words: Treatment outcomes, severe acute malnutrition, children, prospective cohort.
Highlights
The world produces enough food to feed everyone, in 2011 almost 1 billion children, men and women go to bed hungry every night
A total of 332 children aged 6 to 59 months and their mothers/caregivers who had been enrolled to Outpatient therapeutic program (OTP) in the selected health facilities were followed for total of eight weeks
When this result is compared with a study conducted in 2010 among four regions of Ethiopia; it is below the recent total average of the four regions (79%), Amhara regional average (87%) and South nations and nationalities peoples region (SNNPR) regional average (90%) but still it is higher than that of Tigray regional average (72%) (Gertrude et al, 2010). the median length of stay (49 with (IQR 28-56 days) for recovered/cured children in this study was found to be higher than 42 with (IQR28–56 days) reported by a retrospective cohort study conducted in Ethiopia since 2000/01 (Steve and Sadler 2002)
Summary
The world produces enough food to feed everyone, in 2011 almost 1 billion children, men and women go to bed hungry every night. Every year some 9 million children across the world die before they reach their fifth birthday, and about one-third of these untimely deaths are attributed to under-nutrition (Black et al, 2008). For every child who dies as a result of undernutrition, there are many millions more who suffer permanent damage to their health; this impairs the rest of their lives. Some 178 million children under the age of five suffer from stunted growth as a result of under-nutrition [Department of International Development (DFID), 2010). Some 55 million children under the age of five are estimated to be wasted, of whom 19 million (35%) are severely wasted or severely undernourished (Bhutta et al, 2008)
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