Who Guideline On The Prevention And Management Of Wasting And Nutritional Oedema Acute Malnutrition In Infants And Children Under 5 Years

This guideline will have new recommendations on the prevention of wasting and on the clinical management of moderate wasting. It will also update and consolidate the recommendations in the 2013 WHO guidelines for severe acute malnutrition[1] which covered eight broad areas in identification and treatment of infants and children with severe wasting and oedema and also included a limited number of recommendations for infants under six months of age.

The Pocket Book is for use by doctors nurses and other health workers who are responsible for the care of young children at the first level referral hospitals. This second edition is based on evidence from several WHO updated and published clinical guidelines. It is for use in both inpatient and outpatient care in small hospitals with basic laboratory facilities and essential medicines. In some settings these guidelines can be used in any facilities where sick children are admitted for inpatient care. The Pocket Book is one of a series of documents and tools that support the Integrated Managem.

This book provides clear, concise and practical guidelines for treating severely malnourished children successfully, taking into account the limited resources of many hospitals and health units in developing countries, and consistent with other WHO publications. It aims to help improve the quality of inpatient care and so prevent unnecessary deaths, and hospitals which have used these guidelines have reported substantial reductions in mortality rates.

This guideline provides global, evidence-informed recommendations on a number of specific issues related to the management of severe acute malnutrition in infants and children, including in the context of HIV. The guideline will help Member States and their partners in their efforts to make informed decisions on the appropriate nutrition actions for severely malnourished children. It will also support Member States in their efforts to achieve global targets on the maternal, infant and young child nutrition comprehensive implementation plan, especially global target 1, which entails achieving 40% reduction by 2025 of the global number of children under 5 years who are stunted and global target 6 that aims to reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5%. The guideline is intended for a wide audience, including policy-makers, their expert advisers, and technical and programme staff in organizations involved in the design, implementation and scaling-up of nutrition actions for public health. The guideline will form the basis for a revised manual on the management of severe malnutrition for physicians and other senior health workers, and a training course on the management of severe malnutrition.

The evaluation of reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health (RMNCH) by the Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (DCP3) focuses on maternal conditions, childhood illness, and malnutrition. Specifically, the chapters address acute illness and undernutrition in children, principally under age 5. It also covers maternal mortality, morbidity, stillbirth, and influences to pregnancy and pre-pregnancy. Volume 3 focuses on developments since the publication of DCP2 and will also include the transition to older childhood, in particular, the overlap and commonality with the child development volume. The DCP3 evaluation of these conditions produced three key findings: 1. There is significant difficulty in measuring the burden of key conditions such as unintended pregnancy, unsafe abortion, nonsexually transmitted infections, infertility, and violence against women. 2. Investments in the continuum of care can have significant returns for improved and equitable access, health, poverty, and health systems. 3. There is a large difference in how RMNCH conditions affect different income groups; investments in RMNCH can lessen the disparity in terms of both health and financial risk.

The World Health Organization (WHO), in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) convened a 3-day technical consultation on the prevention and treatment of wasting in children, in Geneva, Switzerland on 17–19 December 2019. Bringing together international experts in the fields of undernutrition and child health, the meeting aimed to review the technical framing of wasting, to discuss how to identify children at highest risk of morbidity and mortality and to identify the key gaps in the guidance on preventing and treating wasting in children. This report summarizes the key issues discussed at the meeting, including risk stratification, evidence gaps, research questions and recommendations for developing comprehensive global guidelines on preventing and treating child wasting.