Family MUAC: Action Against Hunger in Senegal – Case Study
In May 2016, the Action Against Hunger team trained 1,132 mothers (known as “PB Mamans” or MUAC Mothers) in eight villages in one catchment area of the region (Kobilo in the district of Thilogne) to measure the middle-upper arm circumference (MUAC) of their children, and to take them to health centres if they were malnourished. This was conducted as a trial intervention in an attempt to improve awareness of malnutrition and increase service uptake of the Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) programme.
Action Against Hunger
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.