{"id":1630,"date":"2021-05-12T06:05:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T03:05:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ona.io\/home\/?p=1630"},"modified":"2025-09-09T11:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T15:47:06","slug":"improving-nutritional-outcomes-for-children-in-zimbabwe-with-better-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ona.io\/home\/improving-nutritional-outcomes-for-children-in-zimbabwe-with-better-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving nutritional outcomes for children in Zimbabwe with better data"},"content":{"rendered":"

The humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe is dire with over 1.1 million children and women in need of nutrition assistance due to widespread economic shocks and natural disasters, including a devastating drought in 2018\/2019<\/span> and Cyclone Idai in March 2019. <\/span><\/p>\n

Among children under 5 years of age, a staggering 3.6 percent of the child population is acutely malnourished while also being afflicted with preventable diseases despite low-cost interventions like Vitamin A, micronutrient powders, and immunizations<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n

To rapidly tackle the most critical needs and target the most affected areas, UNICEF Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health engaged Ona to build an SMS-driven data collection platform that visualizes the nutritional status of children and nutrition-related interventions across the country in real-time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hello Mwana<\/span><\/h2>\n

During the development of this project, we used \u201cHello Mwana\u201d as the internal project name, which in Shona means \u201chello child\u201d. This reinforced for us a key aspect of the system: focusing on impacted children and sourcing information from as close to them as possible. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the field, this intervention relies on health facility workers and volunteer health workers who send up-to-the-minute reports via SMS. <\/span>The SMS reports include data related to acute malnutrition at health facility level, ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) stock numbers, and malnutrition interventions. These values are combined with global acute malnutrition prevalence and reporting participation data, then aggregated and visualized on a web dashboard that highlights key indicators and allows deep dives.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"RUTF stock (red denotes a stockout)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"Number of children screened for acute malnutrition (green denotes high screening rates, an early indicator of increased malnourishment rates).<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

The Hello Mwana dashboard supports decision making with a short turnaround, which is vital in saving lives due to rapidly changing nutrition needs. Scenarios the team responds to include:<\/span><\/p>\n