At UNICEF-supported therapeutic feeding centres, admissions are rising exponentially.
In supplementary feeding centres, admissions of severely malnourished children are growing at alarming rates.
With shortage of food at home, or nobody at home to prepare the food, it was difficult for women to feed during admission; additional feeding costs were incurred by women delivering in health facilities.
Some of these variables that have not been previously reported include the absence of headache (related with septicemia and meningitis rather than meningitis alone), bulging fontanelle, grunting and poor feeding on admission (physical signs encountered in infants), vomiting on admission and a positive blood culture or CSF gram stain.
Feeding program admission criteria are defined by nutritional status.
The health worker then weighs Hehumati and registers his weight, 4 kg, on his outpatient therapeutic feeding programme admission card.
Hypoglycaemia unresponsive to supplemental feeding triggers admission to SCN/NICU, more frequent, larger supplemental feeds, further glucose gel or intravenous glucose therapy, to achieve normal TBGs.
The time to reach target feeds from admission was also faster in gastric group: 8.7 hours (7.6 - 13.0 hours) compared to 12.3 hours (8.9 - 17.5 hours).
The time to reach target feeds from admission was also faster in the gastric group although time to goal from initiation of feeds was similar suggesting the difference is related to the procedure itself rather than feeding intolerance.
In short, all patients were fed from admission; all patients who could tolerate or had no counter indications were fed enterally (by mouth, gastric or jejunal tube); patients were fed parenterally if they did not tolerate enteral feeding; a combination of enteral and parenteral nutrition was given to patients who could not enterally receive targeted caloric intake set at 15 kCal/kg/day [ 22, 23].
