MUAC for Mothers: ALIMA
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.
ALIMA
In 2011, ALIMA began examining the feasibility of training mothers to be able to identify malnutrition in their children. They wanted to reduce the number of children presenting late for treatment for severe malnutrition (which was resulting in more complications), and improve low programme coverage.