Screening of malnutrition in children under 5 years and provision of information in the rural areas of the Great Lakes region

Abstract

Globally about 1 billion people (mainly living in developing countries) cannot get the health services that they need. This is a result of the lack of access, lack of trained health personnel, inadequate resources and facilities, and products and services are not affordable to the majority of the people. The company Healthy Entrepreneurs (HE) tries to solve this problem by providing people, living in the rural areas of low- and middle income countries (Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, Uganda and Haiti), with access to a range of reliable and affordable health impact products (e.g. essential medicines) and services of good quality. They focus their products on treatment and prevention of diseases, but forget about the diagnosis in order to ensure the provision of the adequate treatment. The malnutrition screening application helps in establishing a diagnosis about the health status of children under 5 years. In developing countries malnutrition is still one of the major problems and underlying cause of the majority of illnesses that cause death in young children. One of the problems is that malnutrition is not recognized by the parents and they do not have the knowledge and the means to improve their child’s situation. By creating awareness about the problem and providing them with a screening service that can establish a diagnosis and provide them with the information and products that they need, the child’s health can be improved. The screening service uses the assessment of different signs and symptoms and several measurements. The result of these assessments is a distinguishing in; the children who are healthy, children who are dangerously malnourished (and immediately need a referral to an health centre) and children who are mildly malnourished. The last group of children can be treated by improving the nutrition of the child or by the use of HE products. By identifying the cause of the malnutrition, a customized set of informational videos, products, brochures and additional information sessions can be selected. By the mean of this set, the parents are able to treat the condition of their child and to prevent the child from getting malnourished again in the future.