Continuous Weight and Height Gain Among At-Risk Children Discharged From a Supplementary Feeding Center in Kabul, Afghanistan

摘要

Feeding in emergencies has been based on anthropometric measurements that mostly depend on weight measures and tend to focus on short-term weight gain as its goal. One of the new trends in emergency feeding is to provide feeding therapy at the community where patients are rather than keeping them as inpatients. A community-based feeding program has made the feeding program more sustainable, which is particularly important in the era of protracted emergencies and civil war. Little is known, however, about the impact of nutritional support on long-term neurocognitive development in chronic emergencies. KinderBerg International, eV, has implemented a long-term supplementary feeding program for 6 months after children were discharged from our feeding center. After establishing mother–child bonding before discharge, the children were followed-up for 6 months through monthly visits with anthropometric measurements and neurocognitive assessments. We report our initial findings, which indicate that there are significant continuous gain in both weight and height in children aged 5 years and younger after discharge.