UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund

Published purpose

The project aims to support national efforts to treat acute malnutrition and reduce the number of young children who die each year in Malawi. UNICEF's "Community-Based Therapeutic Care" (CTC) approach works to increase the ability of people to prevent, recognize and manage malnutrition at the community level. Malawi was one of the first countries to pilot the CTC approach to treat acute malnutrition and has been a strong proponent of CTC internationally. CTC is based on building capacity at existing health facilities and uses locally produced Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to enable community-based treatment. RUTF has been recognized internationally as the new standard of acute malnutrition treatment. The project aims to enable 130 additional health facilities to provide effective treatment of severe malnutrition, to increase the number of children under five screened for malnutrition annually by one million, and to increase by 50% the number of children under five treated for malnutrition annually.