Home care for illness
Continue to feed and offer more fluids, including breastmilk, to children when they are sick.
Continuing feeding —including breastfeeding—and offering more fluids to a child when he/she is sick aims at preventing malnutrition and dehydration.
It is reasonable to stimulate child feeding actively also during the recovery period (convalescence), when catch-up growth may occur.
This approach has been the cornerstone of the home management of acute diarrhoeal episodes in under-fives, later recommended as standard home care for child illness.
The anorexia pattern in child illness is peculiar in that it is more pronounced for non-human milk and solid fluids than for breastmilk: breastmilk therefore remains a key food item also during illness.
Studies have shown an improvement in home care for diarrhoea episodes in under-fives after national CDD (control of diarrhoeal diseases) programme interventions (see also ORT, practice 9 ). Other interventions have also been able to improve feeding behaviours.
Of particular interest is the evidence that nutritional counselling—through an IMCI (integrated management of childhood illness)-derived counselling protocol—can improve caretaker feeding behaviour and child nutritional status (increase in weight gain) (see also complementary feeding).
Related links:
Diarrhoea: Why children are still dying and what can be done
