ABSTRACT
Background: Under the National Rural Health Mission all over India, in March 2011, the concept of facility-based dietary management in tertiary care hospital, which is named as Nutritional Rehabilitation Center (NRC), was started with the establishment of NRCs at district level. Objective: Our aim was to evaluate the outcome indicators of facility-based management of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) children admitted in the NRC, to identify the gaps in the NRC management of SAM, and to propose recommendations to bridge the gaps. Materials and Methods: This study is a hospital-based snap short study which was conducted in NRC, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Postgraduate Institute of Paediatrics, Sishu Bhawan, S.C.B Medical College, Cuttack, from 2014 to 2017. Patients >1 month and <5 years of age with SAM admitted to the NRC were included in the study. Results: A total of 353 children were included in the study. Mean age of the children was 12.4 ± 11.8 months. 83.6% of the SAM children were within 24 months. Mean duration of stay in NRC among all the admitted (353 children) SAM children over 3 years was 12.78 ± 7.07 days and mean duration of stay in the NRC among all the discharge cases (246 discharged children) was 15.7 ± 5.86 days. Case fatality rate was 1.5% for the year 2014–2015 and no death was recorded during the year 2015–2016 and 2016–2017. Average daily weight gain was 12.5 ± 5.61 g/kg/day. Conclusion: Implementation of the World Health Organization feeding guidelines resulted in adequate weight gain of inpatient malnourished children with adequate health-care services at the NRCs.