Optimizing the Treatment of Malnutrition
Since 2012, ALIMA and its partners have been training mothers and other caregivers across Africa to use a simple, tri-colored bracelet, known as the MUAC, to screen their children for the earliest signs of malnutrition.
Nigeria: New Specialized Training Center for the treatment of Malnutrition
Dakar, 10 November 2017 – At the University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital (UMTH), some 40 health workers from across northeastern Nigeria’s Borno State, will be enrolled in a newly created, specialized training school to improve the quality of care provided to children under the age of five who suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM) with complications. The program, which will be run by ALIMA (the Alliance for International Medical Action), in partnership with UNICEF and the UMTH, at ALIMA’s Intensive Therapeutic Feeding Center (ITFC) within the UMTH, is the first of its kind in Borno State.
Burkina Faso: Capitalize New Research to Treat Acute Malnutrition
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen and the medical humanitarian organizations ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) released the findings from a study in Burkina Faso, which treated more than 1,600 children with moderate acute malnutrition. The results, published on September 11, 2017 in the open access medical journal PLOS Medicine, showed that corn-soy porridge should be replaced with a lipid-based nutrient supplement (LNS), a fortified peanut butter. The results of the study can be used directly both in the treatment and prevention of acute malnutrition.
South Sudan: « Each day we continue to save the lives of our patients »
At the Raja State Hospital in South Sudan’s Lol State, the power goes out each morning. It won’t come back on for another 12 hours. Health staff can switch on a newly-acquired generator to provide electricity to the most important machines – including two oxygen compressors – but the rest of the hospital remains without lights or fans. There is still no functioning lab on the grounds to diagnose some pathologies or allow for blood transfusions.
South Sudan: Populations threatened by nutritional crisis
DAKAR, May 15, 2017 – For nearly three years, South Sudan has been plagued by a civil war that has displaced 1.9 million people, leaving more than 5 million people in need of food assistance and more than one million children suffering from acute malnutrition. The collapse of the latest peace agreement in July 2016 made the already fragile situation even more dire.
Following an exploration mission in March 2017 to assess needs, the medical organization ALIMA (The Alliance for International Medical Action) deployed an emergency medical intervention in the city of Raja in the northwestern state of Lol.
Nigeria: 3 questions to Aziz Ould Mohamed
Aziz Ould Mohamed is head of mission for ALIMA in Niger. In July, he helped set up ALIMA’s emergency response in Monguno in northeastern Nigeria where the organization is providing medical care for thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) facing an extreme health crisis.
Innovation in preventing malnutrition
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO ABOUT MUAC IN NIGER (IN FRENCH) Mothers can screen malnutrition in their children with a simple color-coded MUAC tape. PUBLICATIONS : Read study “Mothers Understand And Can do it (MUAC), co-signé par Mark Myatt, Thierry Allafort-Duverger, Amour Balogoun, Almou Ibrahim et André Briend, Archives of Public Health, May 2015. Read study […]
Video: Caring, innovating, together in 2016
In 2016, our doctors were able to rescue Louise and her baby through an emergency Caesarean section in the city of Boda in the Central African Republic. Every day on the ground, our teams operate, consult, vaccinate, train. Discover with this video what we have done thanks to your support in 2016. In total, 650,000 […]
Empowering Mothers to Prevent Malnutrition
1.4 million children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition in the Sahel, according to figures from ECHO and UNICEF. ALIMA is exploring new ways of working with mothers to help diagnose malnutrition in their children earlier by simplifying screening procedures.
Northern Nigeria: Thousands of displaced in urgent need of assistance
Following a United Nations alert in May about the dire situation of people displaced by conflict in northeastern Nigeria, ALIMA conducted an exploratory mission in Monguno, a city in Borno State where more than 100,000 displaced people are seeking refuge. Working alongside the Ministry of Health, ALIMA vaccinated children against measles. ALIMA found that more than one in three children were suffering from acute malnutrition, 10 percent of whom were suffering from severe acute malnutrition and at a high risk of death. Faced with this major emergency, ALIMA deployed additional resources and has now opened a clinic to provide urgent medical care to displaced people in Monguno.
