Background: Children with severe acute malnutrition require immediate attention along with proper nutritional
rehabilitation for which nutritional rehabilitation centers (NRC) has been established. Even with establishment of
NRCs the proportion of severe acute malnutrition in community has not been reduced. Thus it is necessary to know
the effect of nutritional interventions on children admitted to these centers. Present study was done to analyze the
effect of nutritional interventions on the children admitted to nutritional rehabilitation centre by reviewing the
anthropometric indicators.
Methods: A longitudinal observational study was done among the children admitted to NRC from January 2013 to
June 2014. A predesigned and pre-tested proforma was used to collect the socio demographic information. Admitted
children were observed to analyze the effects of interventional measures on select anthropometric indicators. The data
collected was entered in Microsoft excel sheet and analyzed.
Results: Majority of the admitted children (41.77%) was in 12-23 months age group. 88(51.76%) were females and
82(48.24%) were males. Overall mean weight at admission was 7.19±1.57 kgs; for males it was 7.23±1.54 kgs and for
females it was 7.16±1.60 kgs. The overall mean weight at discharge is 7.94±1.77 kgs for males it was 8.01±1.82 kgs
and for females it was 7.88±1.72 kgs. The average weight gain for the study group during their stay at the centre was
7.9±1.6 g/kg/day. The target weight was achieved only by 26% of admitted children.
Conclusions: Nutritional rehabilitation centers are effective in management of severe malnutrition. However
improvements are necessary to ensure the full recovery of all children admitted.