Recovery Rate (of children in treatment)

What: The indicator represents the proportion of all children discharged from treatment programs who recovered from the treatment programs (as per recovery criteria used). Why: Recovery is the desired outcome of the treatment program. One of the core performance indicators to measure the quality of treatment of moderate and severe acute malnutrition. When: To measure the outcome and quality of CMAM (MAM and SAM) treatment programs.

Divide the number of children who recovered from the treatment program by the total number of children discharged from the program. Multiply the result by 100. The resulting number is the recovery rate (in percentage).

What activities should the indicator be used for?

(Treatment) programs for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM), including targeted supplementary feeding programs (TSFP), blanket supplementary feeding programs (BSFP, which is more for prevention of MAM but still uses these indicators).

Treatment (or prevention) programs for severe acute malnutrition (SAM), including, outpatient therapeutic programs (OTP), inpatient program/ stabilization center (IP/ SC)

Disaggregate the data by gender, treatment location/ geographic area, age group and (if relevant) specific vulnerable groups, such as children from minority groups. Note, disaggregation by gender is only possible if the CMAM database records cases in this way.

1) The indicator does not require a separate survey – all data can be gained from the treatment program’s registration books and may be calculated in the CMAM database file.

2)  According to the Sphere Standards, a recovery rate of more than 75% is perceived as “acceptable” (MAM and SAM programs).

3) The four core performance indicators of a malnutrition treatment program (e.g., Community Management of Acute Malnutrition(CMAM), including supplementary feeding programs (SFP) and outpatient therapeutic program (OTP) and inpatient program or stabilization center (IP/ SC)) are recovery rate, death rate, defaulter rate and non-recovery rate. They need to be reported together because they are interlinked (should add up to 100%).