By Laudia Sawer
Tema, Jan. 24, GNA – Ms Joyce Asare Kissi, the Head of the Nutrition Unit at Tema General Hospital, has said the unavailability of the Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), popularly known as plumpy nuts, is affecting the treatment of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM).
Ms Kissi said the fortified peanut butter-like paste contained essential macronutrients from the four-star diet groups to aid in the treatment of SAM, known in Ghanaian parlance as ‘kwashiorkor’.
Speaking with the Ghana News Agency in an interview, she said the treatment food, which used to be provided for by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), had become a scarce commodity for some years now.
She stated that with the unavailability of the RUTF from UNICEF, the Tema General Hospital which is one of the few hospitals that treated SAM inpatients, now relied on a local producing company in Kumasi for an alternative treatment food known as ‘project peanut butter’.
She, however, said that the local alternative was also no longer available as the company had halted production, impeding nutritionists’ quest to reduce the vulnerability and high mortality risk among children under five years suffering from kwashiorkor.
Ms Kissi revealed that, having knowledge of the formulae for the preparation of the treatment food, nutritionists at the Tema General Hospital currently prepared their own ready-to-use therapeutic food to manage severe acute malnourished children in their care, stating, however, that it is quite an expensive venture.
She said that kwashiokor children under the care of her outfit are fed and treated under the supervision of the health officials when on admission, explaining that those who have other medical conditions were treated under Inpatient care (IPC), as both conditions are managed concurrently.
She said when discharged, the feed was provided for them for the treatment to continue, indicating that it was well packaged and sealed and therefore did not need refrigeration.
She said the food and treatment milk were packaged in such a way that caregivers would have to take a pack at a time instead of having to fetch it from a container and contaminate it.
The Tema General Hospital had been able to use its own therapeutic food to treat SAM in children and recorded remarkable survival.
Ms Kissi, however, indicated that because the treatment was not included in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and most of the parents of children with kwashiorkor did not have the means to pay a token for the feed, they stopped the treatment after discharge, leading to relapse and in some cases, resulting in the death of the children.
She appealed to the government and the National Health Insurance Authority to include SAM treatment in the scheme to help save the lives of the children, as it still existed in Ghana and posed growth and developmental challenge to patients.
She said that Tema General Hospital, which was the only hospital with inpatient care for kwashiokor treatment within Tema and its environs, recorded on average two severe acute malnutrition cases per week.
Ms Kissi appealed to organisations and individuals to add the nutrition unit of the Tema General Hospital to their support list, indicating that the unit needed baby diapers, grains, and children’s clothing to assist poor mothers on admission.
GNA