Recovery Time and Treatment Outcomes Among Children Aged 6-59 Months with Severe Acute Malnutrition Admitted to Gardo General Hospital, Puntland, Somalia: A Retrospective Cohort Study Design

Abstract

Background: Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), characterised by an extremely low weight-for-height or length, represents a significant health challenge in Somalia, where complex crises contribute to elevated mortality rates among children under five years of age. Objective: To estimate the median recovery time and assess treatment outcomes for children aged 6-59 months with SAM admitted to Gardo General Hospital in Gardo, Puntland, Somalia. Methods: An institutional-based retrospective cohort study was conducted from July 2023 to July 2025. The study employed data collected from the children's inquiry data form of a systematically random selected sample of 250 children. Data entry was performed using the KOBO Toolbox and subsequently exported to R Programming version 4.4.0 for analysis. Descriptive statistics were utilised to examine demographic and care-related characteristics, anthropometric and complication-related characteristics. Survival curves, such as Kaplan-Meier curves, were generated to estimate the median recovery time from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM). Results: The findings of this study indicated that 239(95.6%) children achieved successful treatment outcomes, 4(1.6%) children were transferred out, 4(1.6%) defaulted on their treatment, and 2 children (0.8%) remained in the program during the study period. Unfortunately, there was one recorded fatality, accounting for 1(0.4%) of the cases. Conclusion: This study found a median recovery time of 9 days and a 95.6% recovery rate for children aged 6 to 59 months with Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) at Gardo General Hospital.