Staff competencies at health facilities implementing an outpatient therapeutic programme for severely acute malnourished children

Abstract

Background: Malnutrition continues to be a major cause of disease burden, especially in low-income countries, killing millions of children. In order to reduce morbidity and mortality, the management of children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) requires knowledgeable and skilled staff. In the study reported on in this article, we measured the level of knowledge of staff working in the outpatient therapeutic programme (OTP) in Lusaka, Zambia.
Methods: The study targeted healthcare workers managing SAM from five randomly selected health facilities of the 12 health centres that have been implementing the OTP since 2005. At facility level, staff were first listed and then randomly selected for interviews. Four members of staff were selected for the self-administered questionnaire, three for the in-depth interviews and three for observations.
Findings: Overall, the aggregated knowledge of the healthcare staff of integrated management of acute malnutrition procedures were slightly above 50%. Most staff could not correctly cite key knowledge segments to ensure that they would adequately manage SAM children.
Conclusion: There was average knowledge to manage SAM among the healthcare staff; this suggested a need to strengthen staff's knowledge base and skills in certain areas critical to manage SAM children adequately.