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Nutrition rehabilitation units


H Beach
P Lwana

Abstract

We describe our aims in opening our Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit and its organisation, with emphasis on health education, home budgeting, and demonstration of how kwashiorkor can be cured by a good diet. Our problems of selection concern mostly the recognition of kwashiorkor and infections, proximity to hospital, and finally the problem of follow-up. Looking to the future, it seems obvious to us that follow-up at home is going to become increasingly important. It is an opportunity for combining encouragement, (e.g. persuading mothers to start vegetable gardens), and for health education; also for informing other visitors who may be interested in what is going on, and this constitutes personalised health education. We hope to start clinic-related Nutrition Rehabilitation Units in the district, thus obviating distance from and cost of transport to, the hospital itself. We are still very much at the beginning of our Transkei experiment.

S. Afr. Med. J. 48. 2177 (1974).

Journal Identifiers


eISSN: 2078-5135
print ISSN: 0256-9574