Journal Article

Bringing severe acute malnutrition treatment close to households through community health workers can lead to early admissions and improved discharge outcomes

Charle-Cuellar, Pilar, López-Ejeda, Noemí, Guerrero, Saul, Álvarez, José Luis, Vargas, Antonio, G. B. Alé, Franck

2020

Overview

Severe acute malnutrition (SAM) affects over 16.6 million children worldwide. The integrated Community Case Management (iCCM) strategy seeks to improve essential health by means of nonmedical community health workers (CHWs) who treat the deadliest infectious diseases in remote rural areas where there is no nearby health center. The objective of this study was to assess whether SAM treatment delivered by CHWs close to families' locations may improve the early identification of cases compared to outpatient treatment at health facilities (HFs), with a decreased number complicated cases referred to stabilization centers, increased anthropometric measurements at admission (closer to the admission threshold) and similarity in clinical outcomes (cure, death, and default). The study included 930 children aged 6 to 59 months suffering from SAM in the Kita district of the Kayes Region in Mali; 552 children were treated by trained CHWs. Anthropometric measurements, the presence of edema, and other medical signs were recorded at admission, and the length of stay and clinical outcomes were recorded at discharge. The results showed fewer children with edema at admission in the CHW group than in the HF group (0.4% vs. 3.7%; OR = 10.585 [2.222-50.416], p = 0.003). Anthropometric measurements at admission were higher in the CHW group, with fewer children falling into the lowest quartiles of both weight-for-height z-scores (20.2% vs. 31.5%; p = 0.002) and mid-upper arm circumference (18.0% vs. 32.4%; p<0.001), than in the HF group. There was no difference in the length of stay. More children in the CHW group were cured (95.9% vs. 88.7%; RR = 3.311 [1.772-6.185]; p<0.001), and there were fewer defaulters (3.7% vs. 9.8%; RR = 3.345 [1.702-6.577]; p<0.001) than in the HF group. Regression analyses demonstrated that less severe anthropometric measurements at admission resulted in an increased probability of cure at discharge. The study results also showed that CHWs provided more integrated care, as they diagnosed and treated significantly more cases of infectious diseases than HFs (diarrhea: 36.0% vs. 18.3%, p<0.001; malaria: 41.7% vs. 19.8%, p<0.001; acute respiratory infection: 34.8% vs. 25.2%, p = 0.007). The addition of SAM treatment in the curative tasks that the CHWs provided to the families resulted in earlier admission and more integrated care for children than those associated with HFs. CHW treatment also achieved better discharge outcomes than standard community treatment.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Acute Disease / Anthropometry / Arm - anatomy & histology / Arm circumference / Biology and Life Sciences / Body Height / Body measurements / Body Weight / Child, Preschool / Children / Communicable diseases / Community health aides / Community Health Workers / Comparative analysis / Diarrhea / Discharge / Diseases / Edema / Family Characteristics / Female / Health aspects / Health care facilities / Health Facilities / Health services / Hospitalization / Households / Humans / Infectious diseases / Lung diseases / Malaria / Male / Mali / Malnutrition / Malnutrition - therapy / Medical personnel / Medical research / Medicine and Health Sciences / Models, Theoretical / Patient Discharge / People and Places / Quartiles / Regression analysis / Respiratory tract diseases / Rural areas / Statistical analysis / Suffering / Vector-borne diseases