Hi Everyone!!
So while researching for my Literature Review, I stumbled upon this article that is not necessarily directly related with my practice experience, but it does have similar themes. The article is called “The Lives of Many Malnourished Children Saved by Antibiotics,” and is based off the research findings of Indy Trehan and Mark Manary. Their research was conducted in numerous rural clinics across Malawi over a span of 4 years, and it documented the health of children with severe malnutrition. All of the children were fed with a peanut butter based food, part of the Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) program, which was created under the Project Peanut Butter program that Manary founded. In addition to the RUTF peanut butter, some participants were given a certain antibiotic, while others were simply given a placebo. This was enforced to determine the effectiveness of the antibiotic in relation to the level of malnourishment that the children had. Previous research has shown that Project Peanut Butter has an 85-90% success rate of decreasing the level of malnutrition in the children, and with the added benefit of having the kids take antibiotics, the death rate for those taking the placebo was 7%, and the death rate when taking the antibiotic was only 4.5%.
Learning about this was very interesting news, because I feel like if this was transformed to a multi-national operation, it could save so many more lives around the world. Especially since malnutrition is such a problem in third world countries, by just giving antibiotics in addition to the RUTF, it seems like it would be an easy adjustment for government organizations to make. Also, since malnutrition is the number one killer of children around the world, this little step could definitely affect the death rate around the world and help to get the world closer to achieving the Millenium Development Goal for reducing child mortality rates.
For my practice experience, I will be heading to Tacloban City in the Philippines, and will be teaching nutrition education classes to a local community there, and evaluating the nutritional standards of the people in the community. This discovery in antibiotics, in relation with relieving malnutrition, could possibly be correlated over to with the malnutrition problem that is occurring in the Philippines. Before I go abroad, I can hopefully get in contact with the nutritionists working there already, to gauge their opinion on the value of antibiotics in the fight against malnutrition. If anyone has any thoughts about this, or other interesting articles on malnutrition, I would love to hear them. Thank you!!
And here is a link to the article I used as the basis for this blog entry: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/255663.php
So while researching for my Literature Review, I stumbled upon this article that is not necessarily directly related with my practice experience, but it does have similar themes. The article is called “The Lives of Many Malnourished Children Saved by Antibiotics,” and is based off the research findings of Indy Trehan and Mark Manary. Their research was conducted in numerous rural clinics across Malawi over a span of 4 years, and it documented the health of children with severe malnutrition. All of the children were fed with a peanut butter based food, part of the Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) program, which was created under the Project Peanut Butter program that Manary founded. In addition to the RUTF peanut butter, some participants were given a certain antibiotic, while others were simply given a placebo. This was enforced to determine the effectiveness of the antibiotic in relation to the level of malnourishment that the children had. Previous research has shown that Project Peanut Butter has an 85-90% success rate of decreasing the level of malnutrition in the children, and with the added benefit of having the kids take antibiotics, the death rate for those taking the placebo was 7%, and the death rate when taking the antibiotic was only 4.5%.
Learning about this was very interesting news, because I feel like if this was transformed to a multi-national operation, it could save so many more lives around the world. Especially since malnutrition is such a problem in third world countries, by just giving antibiotics in addition to the RUTF, it seems like it would be an easy adjustment for government organizations to make. Also, since malnutrition is the number one killer of children around the world, this little step could definitely affect the death rate around the world and help to get the world closer to achieving the Millenium Development Goal for reducing child mortality rates.
For my practice experience, I will be heading to Tacloban City in the Philippines, and will be teaching nutrition education classes to a local community there, and evaluating the nutritional standards of the people in the community. This discovery in antibiotics, in relation with relieving malnutrition, could possibly be correlated over to with the malnutrition problem that is occurring in the Philippines. Before I go abroad, I can hopefully get in contact with the nutritionists working there already, to gauge their opinion on the value of antibiotics in the fight against malnutrition. If anyone has any thoughts about this, or other interesting articles on malnutrition, I would love to hear them. Thank you!!
And here is a link to the article I used as the basis for this blog entry: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/255663.php
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.