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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2005 Mar 21:4:12.
doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-4-12.

An assessment of food supplementation to chronically sick patients receiving home based care in Bangwe, Malawi: a descriptive study

Cameron Bowie  1 , Linda Kalilani, Reg Marsh, Humphrey Misiri, Paul Cleary, Claire Bowie
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

An assessment of food supplementation to chronically sick patients receiving home based care in Bangwe, Malawi: a descriptive study

Cameron Bowie et al. Nutr J. .

Abstract

Background: The effect of food supplementation provided by the World Food Programme to patients and their families enrolled in a predominantly HIV/AIDS home based care programme in Bangwe Malawi is assessed.

Methods: The survival and nutritional status of patients and the nutritional status of their families recruited up to six months before a food supplementation programme started are compared to subsequent patients and their families over a further 12 months.

Results: 360 patients, of whom 199 died, were studied. Food supplementation did not improve survival but had an effect (not statistically significant) on nutritional status. Additional oil was given to some families; it may have improved survival but not nutritional status.

Conclusion: Food supplementation to HIV/AIDS home based care patients and their families does not work well. This may be because the intervention is too late to affect the course of disease or insufficiently targeted perhaps due to problems of distribution in an urban setting. The World Food Programme's emphasis on supplementary feeding for these families needs to be reviewed.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Survival of all home based care patients – Kaplan Meier analysis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Age distribution of home based care patients.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Sex distribution of patients enrolled in three periods of the Bangwe study.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Nutritional status of home based care patients on first presentation.
Figure 5
Figure 5
survival of patients enrolled in the home based care scheme during three different periods – Kaplan Meier analysis.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Survival of home based care patients who were or were not allocated oil supplementation – Kaplan Meier analysis.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Survival of home based care patients who did or did not actually receive oil – Kaplan Meier analysis.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Survival of patients who presented in clinical stage 4 disease in the first sixth months after presentation – Kaplan Meier analysis.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Survival of patients who presented in clinical stage 2 or 3 disease in the first six months after presentation – Kaplan Meier analysis.
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References

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