So this baby has kwashiorkor
two years and four months old
so he started getting swollen like that in January
so this is the typical
sign of kwashiorkor which is protein malnutrition
so this is just
hunger starvation
issues
so any swelling and
edema we call it
is Kwash and then the dry kind is marasmus. So the dry kind is the really really
skinny kids who have like
the wrinkly skin because they just have no mass at all
and it's just
it's just really a difference in terms of the balance of how much you're missing
like the kwash children are missing
relatively more protein
than nonprotein foods
and so the treatment that we give for malnutrition
is a relatively new treatment it's a
ready to use therapeutic food
so it s a version, it's a peanut based
highly caloric nutritious food
that we call
Nourimanba
and manba is peanut butter
we looked at the research studies coming out about using it especially in Africa
and it's particularly good for community-based therapy because you don't have to admit all of the kids
the really really sick ones you still have to admit
but you can give them
a dose
certain amount of
this paste and
let them go home and teach the mom how to feed the kids throughout the day
and it works much much more quickly than the milk.
She was saying though that he's not able to take the manba yet
he's so sick that he is not even able to eat that
when they get so malnourished they actually lose their appetite, and the same way their legs out swollen, their gut is swollen as well.
so right now he is on the older fashioned milk product
and then as soon as he's
able to tolerate it, he'll get more.
usually the children have both
just calorie deficit
and protein deficit
and this child in particular it's like a balance of
more protein
missing than other calories
so the proteins help to keep the fluids
in your blood stream
so it's just everything that's really weakened
and the treatment is just highly nutritious food
and antibiotics
and antparasitics
Really recovering from
you know there's
some evidence to say
that children who have severe malnutrition episodes like this will never truly recover
because if you're having a growth spurt, or you should be
and you have this episode
you know they end up a lot of them being stunted, you know they never
get to their height potential
your mental development is not as good as it should be
depending on how severe it is and how often it happens
so he could get better now with our treatment
but the n what's going to happen when we send him home? Like if unless we try and do something about her home
socio-economic situation
her situation for her child never going to help