An urban nutrition education and rehabilitation centre: a description of the programme and change in nutritional status of children who were enrolled.

We report on a community-based day care nutrition rehabilitation and education centre which was established by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B) in a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Between March-December, 1985 approximately 10 children aged 1 to 5 years with a percent weight for height (% wt/ht) of 60 to 85 were enrolled in each of 9 sessions which were 3 to 5 weeks long. The children were fed 3 meals and 2 snacks daily made from locally available inexpensive foods. A nutrition education programme, developed with input from several feeding centres in Dhaka, included daily lessons, participatory cooking and personal hygiene sessions. Of the 85 children entering the programme, 82 (95%) completed 3 or more weeks. Relative to baseline, a median increase of 8.7% wt/ht was observed at 5 weeks (p less than 0.001), with the greatest improvement occurring in those children presenting with the lowest weights. Median increases of 7.2 and 7.4% wt/ht were noted 6 and 10 months after admission, respectively. Gender and minor illness did not have a significant impact on change in nutritional status. Poor performance of mothers in assigned chores was associated with inferior improvement in nutritional status 5 weeks but not 6 months post-admission. These results suggest that the intervention implemented by the centre may have been effective in improving nutritional status and that more rigorous evaluation of participants in relation to suitably matched concurrent controls should be performed.