Community-Based Management of Severe Acute Malnutrition – A Joint Statement.

Severe acute malnutrition remains a major killer of children under five years of age.
Until recently, treatment has been restricted to facility-based approaches, greatly
limiting its coverage and impact. New evidence suggests, however, that large
numbers of children with severe acute malnutrition can be treated in their communities
without being admitted to a health facility or a therapeutic feeding centre.

The community-based approach involves timely detection of severe acute malnutrition
in the community and provision of treatment for those without medical complications
with ready-to-use therapeutic foods or other nutrient-dense foods at home. If properly
combined with a facility-based approach for those malnourished children with medical
complications and implemented on a large scale, community-based management of
severe acute malnutrition could prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.