Family MUAC: Action Against Hunger in India – Case Study
The ‘Family MUAC’ approach, also known as MUAC for mothers or Mother-MUAC, trains mothers and other caregivers to identify early signs of malnutrition in their children using a simple to use Mid-Upper Arm Circumference (MUAC) tape. By moving this task to mothers (or other family members), who are able to do it as effectively as Community Health Workers (CHWs), the cases are detected earlier, leading to less hospitalisations. Mothers are empowered to manage their children’s health and CHWs have more time to carry out other tasks.
Action Against Hunger
In order to address the large number of children suffering from acute malnutrition in Rajasthan, Action Against Hunger initiated Community based Management of Acute Malnutrition in close collaboration with the government in Baran. However, even with the CMAM approach implemented, treatment coverage was still low. It was noticed that however well trained and motivated the frontline workers were, they had limitations following multiple cohort of malnourished children, who usually stayed in the outskirts of villages, and had limited access to the Anganwadi centres or sub-centres. In addition, competing health programmes and village administrative works are found
to put lesser premium on home-visits by frontline workers, especially when the families stayed in settlements away from service units.