Abstract:
Background: The world Health Organization recommends in patient therapeutic feeding program
as a standard treatment protocol for the management of complicated severe acute malnutrition.
This program has been decentralized to public hospitals in Ethiopia. Early recovery is a
performance indicator for severe acute malnourished children for the therapeutic feeding.
However, time to recovery from severe acute malnutrition under this program varies.
Objective: The aim of the study was to assess time to recovery and its predictors among children
aged 6-59 months admitted with severe acute malnutrition to inpatient therapeutic feeding centers
at hospitals in west Shoa zone, Ethiopia.
Methods: Institution based retrospective cohort study was conducted on 428 children aged 6 to 59
months admitted with Severe Acute malnutrition cases at selected hospitals in West Shewa Zone
from January1, 2017 to December30, 2021.A total of 428 charts were selected using a systematic
sampling method. Kaplan–Meier estimates and survival curve were used to estimate the survival
time, log-rank test was used to compare survival time between groups of categorical variables, and
Cox-proportional hazard model was used to identify significant predictor of the time to recovery.
P value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results; The nutritional of recovery rate was 81.27% (95%,CI;77.09-84.83)with a median
nutritional recovery time of 15 days (IQR;10).The predictors of time to recovery were having HIV
(AHR=0.31,95%CI,0.14-0.66),Tuberculosis(AHR=0.25,95%CI,0.16-0.38),notbreastfeeding until
24 months (AHR=0.29,95%CI,0.22-0.41),partially vaccinated for age (AHR=0.43,95CI, 0.31-
0.61),Admitted during production season (AHR=0.49,95CI%,0.37-0.67) and not took deworming
(AHR= 0.44,95%CI,0.31-0.63) were associated with longer periods of nutritional recovery time.
Conclusion and recommendations. Both percentage of recovery and the recovery time were
within the acceptable minimum standards. But special attention has to be given to children who
having HIV, Tuberculosis, breast feeding less than 24 months, partially vaccinated for their age,
children admitted during production season and not supplementing with deworming during
inpatient management. The health workers with different stages of health administer must increase
the awareness of breastfeeding, fully vaccination and ways of preventing communicable disease.
