A new article by the Wasting and Stunting Technical Interest Group has been published in PLOS Global Public Health. The article titled ‘Re-thinking “non-response” to wasting treatment: exploratory analysis from 14 studies’ has 4 key messages:
- Three-quarters of children discharged as “non-responders” in wasting treatment programmes are growing just as well as children who recover but start from a worse nutritional status at admission. The label “non-responder” is misleading. Viewing them as “non-responders” risks discharging them too early and underestimating the overall effectiveness of therapeutic feeding programmes. They should be considered treatment successes!
- The above children are growing well, but they have not met the discharge criteria for recovery within a CMAM programme’s maximum length of stay, which is normally 3-4 months. They may therefore require a longer time under treatment to give them the chance to recover.
- One-quarter of children discharged as “non-responders” represent the true treatment failures as they do not grow at all. This group had the highest proportion of children with reported co-morbidities. They require urgent early referral for further investigations to enable more tailored support to be given.
- It is not easy to predict which children will go on to recover, be “non-responders” who are actually growing well, or be true treatment failures. However, the models suggest that children who are severely underweight on admission have a higher risk of being in the true treatment failure group.