MUAC = Mother Understand And Can do it

Thank you for sharing Mark.

When I was in Niger last January, I visited ALIMA BEFEN in Zinder, and they shared the presentation with their results. Really impressive. MUAC at admission was higher, defaulter rates are much lower, accuracy from measurements of mothers was better (less children rejected at facility level), better coverage and costs were 2.5 times less than using community volunteers. You can download the presentation from my dropbox (In French): https://www.dropbox.com/s/9wl02jnnqlobphz/PPT%20restitution%20PB_VF%20251214.pptx?dl=0 Cheers

Hi Mark, I am hoping they will share the final report soon so the results can be seen in detail. For urban settings, it was also implemented in Freetown as an alternative to continue screening despite the no touch policy established as a result of the EVD outbreak. The field test was providing positive results, but lack some quality in terms of data collection and representation of the results. I will try to get more information as I got a bit disconnected from SL after much travel to other countries, but I agree, I am looking forward to test/implement this approach in camps and also in areas of South Sudan where access to program areas and population movements is limited during the 6 months of the rainy season, i.e. In case anyone is interested, or has more data to share, this is what I got from Sierra Leone's initial experience (Dec 2014): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rvoqkt9rza069nk/AABobTIc6LE_kk2JXbwqVIYta?dl=0

Hi all, Sorry, I was not very clear before, the data I shared was sent with me by the DFA of Ireland, as a expression of the joint efforts of several NGO (Plan international, ACF, GOAL and others) to determine if the use of the dedicated leaflets created to train the mothers to measure MUAC was useful and provided positive outcomes. I was not involved but as it was discussed with Marie and Hatty, I will work during these weeks to find out more details about it and possibly include it in the note that I have been asked to prepare re infant feeding in EVD outbreak. I will be contacting as many colleagues as possible to gather experiences and data. Cheers

svp pouviez vous m'envoyer les résultats de la première étude réalisée par ALIMA BEFEN sur le projet MUAC? merci

Thank you. Well done! Mothers are smart. And MUAC is a community and family tool as well as assisting workers.

Mothers Understand And Can do it! well yes, of course they can! indeed mothers are smart - above all they care desperately about the well-being of their children and are with them all the time - not just a 'when passing through the village' health care worker, however dedicated they might be. MUAC has for too long been mystified as a 'medical tool' that requires a special training course, a health care worker and so on - we think it is perfectly normal in the resource rich world for mothers to have a thermometer, take their child's temperature when they are worried, and seek health care appropriately based on the result. what is so scary to those who are invested in the 'medicalisation' of anthropometry that we allow mothers access to this very simple, exceedingly cheap tool in order to monitor the nutritional status of their children in the resource poor world? ALIMA are currently preparing for publication the 'scaling-up' paper which details what we did after the pilot study in a large community setting. it will not surprise you to learn that 12 months later, ALL of the mothers, despite some of their precarious living conditions, had safe-guarded their MUAC tape for use in the care of their children if we are serious about tackling global child malnutrition, then involving mothers and allowing them access to this simple tool with minimal (cheap) training is one of the key steps in allowing children that need treatment to be identified and have access to care it's a no-brainer really isn't it?