Letter with article suggestions, by Inge Verdonk

Dear editors,

With very much interest I read issue 8 of Field Exchange. However, I cannot agree with the article on increasing protein to poultry (I was anyway wondering why you included this article, as it has hardly a link to emergency nutrition). These moist places which attract insects, also attract mosquitoes, and so increase the risk of malaria. I think the old advice of a compost heap/pit is much better. Chicken can find plenty insects in compost (ask my chicken), and at the same time the compost has many other well-known benefits.

I hope you can include an article on the impact of the big bellies of malnourished children on Weight for Height. In our TFC we have sometimes children with a red MUAC and physical signs of malnutrition, but with >80% WfH, I suppose this is caused by the weight in the big belly. I wondered how this would influence the data of nutrition surveys? In my last survey I did not find high levels of malnutrition, but all children had big bellies. Is there any information on the impact of big bellies on nutrition survey results?

Maybe you can also write an article about the software programmes for analysing nutrition surveys. Epi-info/Epi-nut is becoming rather out-dated. I still use it to calculate the percentage malnourished children. After wards I export the data to Excel for further statistics, e.g. to check if there are significant difference between age groups. But I'm no computer wizard and I hope someone has good tips on how to use Epi-nut more efficient, or on how to do the whole survey in Excel, or maybe new programmes are available?

I know it is probably easier for me to ask these questions, than for you to find people who want to write articles about these subjects. Thank you anyway for all the other interesting articles, they are often very useful, and they make me feel I stay at least a bit updated out here in the bush.

With warmest regards,
Inge Verdonk
email: jose@infocom.co.ug