Services or Programs Provided to Address the Prevalence of Malnutrition in Madang
Malnutrition steals potential
By: Mckoi Malt, Christophilda Pih, & Veronica Pouna
Services or Programs provided to address the Prevalence of Malnutrition in Madang
Has Papua New Guinea’s aim to reduce childhood malnutrition through a multi-faceted approach been successful? According to (UNICEF 2023), PNG faces significant child under nutrition challenges, with nearly half of children under 5 experiencing stunting and 14% suffering from acute malnutrition or wasting. Due to these challenges, PNG has become a participant in the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) program, which demonstrates a strong commitment to addressing malnutrition in 24 nations in the Global Action on Child Wasting (UNICEF EAPRO, 2023). Therefore, this blog post will briefly expand more on the services, programs, or projects that are or have been implemented to address the prevalence of malnutrition in children under five in Madang Province.
In Madang, there is no specific data to show the percentage of malnutrition in children under five. However, according to (Wand et al.2012) found that 49% prevalence of stunting and 22% prevalence of wasting which are forms of malnutrition in the country. In order to address malnutrition the National Department of Health with the Donor partners have done some impediment projects and programs to address the prevalence. The citizens of Madang have benefit from New Zealand government funding, to implement the maternal, new born child health and nutrition programs (Word Vision 2017). Also one initiative was funded by the World Bank to pay quarterly incentives for pregnant mother at the antenatal visits, lactating mothers at the postnatal visits and baby clinics to care for their babies (TVWAN 2024). These projects were done to motivate mothers to take care of the children with proper nutrition’s from birth till the age of two.
In Madang town clinic the normal child health programs including baby clinics, immunization and nutrition programs are available to the catchment population and also the general public. According to (Natalis, 2025), the programs of nutrition are available at the clinic where the nutrition service is provided on regular basis. However, due to the limited staff capacity the community outreach programs are not implemented but the volunteers in the catchment areas assist the officers in identifying and referring the patients to the clinic. In the case of measuring and diagnosing malnutrition at the clinic, the clinicians use the standard measurement and treatment protocol. The instrument like Mid-Upper Arm Circumference tapemeasure (MUAC), High board, weighing scale, are used to measure against the standard weight chart according to their gender for diagnosis. The severity of the malnutrition’s depends on the assessments that are conducted; whether it can be acute, moderate or chronic malnutrition’s. Based on the diagnosis the treatment are given accordingly, where the children are de-wormed by albendazole, with micro-nutrients and RUTF (Ready Used Therapeutic Food) over periods of months for recovery. However, if the case is very serious the team at Madang Town clinic, referred the patients to the Modilon Provincial Hospital for admission, monitoring and further assessment there. These are the services that are provided by the Madang Town Clinic to address the prevalence of Malnutrition in children less than five (5) in Madang.
For more information on the above blog, click on the video to watch what a Community Health Worker at the Madang Urban Clinic has to say regarding the services they provide to address the prevalence of Malnutrition in children.
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| Community Health Worker (CHW) at the Madang Urban Town clinic, showing the Height board used to measure children's height. |
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| Madang Urban Town clinic - This is where most of our research on Malnutrition in children <5 was carried out. |
Bibliography
Natalis A. (personal communication, 2025). Madang Town Clinic
UNICEF EAPRO. (2023). Integrating Treatment Services for Severe Acute Malnutrition into the National Health System. In Papua New Guinea (PNG). East Asia and Pacific: UNICEF. Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/eap/reports/treatment-services-severe-acute-malnutrition-in-papua-new-guinea
Vision, W. (2017). Improving health status of children and families in rural Madang. World Vision Papua New Guinea. Retrieved from http://www.wvi.org/video/improving-health-status-children-and-families-rural-madang.
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