ComPAS: Combined Protocol for Acute Malnutrition Study

At any given time, 45 million children around the world are suffering from acute malnutrition, and up to 2 million children a year die. Airbel is leading innovation on simplified approaches to treating acute malnutrition, and ensuring more children receive life-saving treatment with the same resources. Through our groundbreaking innovation via ComPas, we have seen firsthand the impact simplified approaches can have in ensuring no child dies of hunger.

Despite the existence of a simple, affordable treatment–a peanut-based paste known as Ready-to-Use-Therapeutic-Food – to save their lives, in places where IRC works, less than 1 in 5 children with acute malnutrition receive this life-saving treatment. The IRC, in partnership with Action Against Hunger and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, have developed a new approach that offers the promise of simpler, less expensive, and more comprehensive treatment, known as the ComPas or combined protocol. The combined protocol is scalable, less expensive than the standard protocol, and has been proven to help over 90% of malnourished children recover in just weeks. It is also simpler for health workers and ensures children are treated before they deteriorate into the more dangerous form of severe malnutrition.

The IRC advocates for and champions radically simpler, scalable and cost-efficient treatment approaches for acute malnutrition - and implements them in affected countries worldwide. This is one in a suite of solutions the IRC is proposing to create a future in which every malnourished child is treated. Learn more about IRC’s Movement against Malnutrition.