Final Report - Linkages Project

3. Nutritional care of the sick child
The recommendations for the feeding of sick children correspond with the international Integrated Management of
Childhood Illness (IMCI) recommendations, which have been adopted by the Ministry of Health and Family Planning
in Madagascar. The project focused on messages that encouraged child caretakers to provide more recuperative
feeding to children after each illness. Data are presented below only for PD BL and PD EL, but not for OD BL and
OD EL as not all indicators were collected in OD BL.
Child Illness
Proportion of children 0–5 months suffering from an illness during the
previous 2 weeks
PD BL 2000 2001 2002 2004 2005 PD EL
Infant Ill 30% 29% 28% 24% 28% 14% 22%
Diarrhea 6% 6% 3% 5% 3% 2% 3%
Fever 10% 5% 3% 7% 7% 5% 6%
Cough 22% 17% 21% 13% 16% 8% 11%
Other 3% 4% 4% 3% 6% 2% 7%
Proportion of children 0–23 months suffering from an illness during the
previous 2 weeks
PD BL 2000 2001 2002 2004 2005 PD EL
Infant Ill 38% n/a 31% 32% 37% 24% 35%
Diarrhea 12% n/a 8% 12% 12% 7% 12%
Fever 15% n/a 7% 11% 11% 11% 12%
Cough 22% n/a 17% 14% 16% 10% 16%
Other 2% n/a 4% 3% 6% 3% 8%
Conclusions:
• As the surveys were implemented during the same period, October and November, there should be no seasonal
effect.
• There is significant decrease of disease incidence for infants under 6 months in PD BL and PD ED from 30%
(n=320) to 22% (n=500) (p