Cost–effectiveness of community-based treatment of severe acute malnutrition in children

Abstract

Severe acute malnutrition affects 20 million children aged under 5 years old worldwide. Medical complications and death are common, but nutritional and medical treatment can result in good outcomes. Randomized trials of treatment after in-patient stabilization have shown community-based treatment to have similar outcomes to hospital-based treatment, at lower cost. Community-based ambulatory treatment, with in-patient care reserved for the most severe cases, is increasingly being implemented in Africa but has not been evaluated in randomized trials. Community-based treatment programs have shown favorable outcomes. Economic evaluations of community-based treatment have included cost analyses, cost and consequence analyses and decision analyses. Treatment costs have been consistently lower than for institution-based treatment. Costs of ambulatory community-based treatment of severe acute malnutrition have ranged between US$46 to $453 per child, depending on the type of care provided and the costing methods used. Recent studies have reported on costs and outcomes of similar large-scale African programs covering geographically defined populations, with ambulatory care for most children, and initial in-patient stabilization for the minority with most severe disease. In these studies the costs ranged from US$129 to $201 per child, and mortality rates ranged from 1.2 to 9.2%, depending on length of follow-up. A decision tree model based on such a program in Zambia estimated that community-based treatment of severe acute malnutrition in primary-care centers, with hospital access, cost US$203 per case treated, US$1760 per life saved, and US$53 per disability-adjusted life year gained, compared with no treatment. This latter cost per disability-adjusted life year gained suggests that community-based treatment of severe acute malnutrition is cost effective compared with other priority health interventions in low-income countries, and compared with such countries’ national incomes.

Keywords::

• community-based treatment
• decision tree model
• economic evaluation
• program data
• severe acute malnutrition
• trials

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author received payment and support from Valid International for carrying out one of the studies reviewed[16], is collaborating with Valid International and Valid Nutrition on a RUTF trial, and was employed by the University of East Anglia while writing this article. The author has no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.