NGO supports mobile app to fight child malnutrition

Women & children at maternity ward in Sine Saloum, Senegal (January 2006). Photo: Ji-Elle via Wikimedia Commons
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• ‘Acción contra el Hambre’ & Complutense team build photo diagnosis app
• Call for help in beta-testing in Spain prior to Senegal rollout in summer 2016

Researchers at Madrid’s Complutense University working with anti-hunger NGO Acción contra el Hambre have developed a new mobile app to register and analyze nutritition levels in children and are calling on parents of Spanish children for help in beta-testing the app prior to rollout this summer to combat infant and child malnutrition in Africa.

Supported by Acción contra el Hambre, the Spanish affiliate of international NGO “Action Against Hunger – ACT International”, researchers in the Complutense’s Nutritional Epidemiology Program (Epinut) have developed the SAM Photo Diagnosis App in order to aid in the field diagnosis of severe and acute infant malnutrition so that humanitarian relief workers using mobile devices in Africa and elsewhere can more quickly and efficiently identify and save the lives of children at risk of malnutrition.

In the current beta-testing phase, Acción contra el Hambre is calling on parents in Spain to volunteer to have their young children be photographed with a mobile device in order to input data from the photos into a mathematical algorithm that will improve the efficiency of diagnosis by the mobile app upon field rollout this summer in Senegal, said to have one of the highest rates of infant malnutrition on the African continent.

► Read More in Spanish at Europa Press and the Universidad Complutense …

► Download PDF in Spanish to read more about the SAM Photo Diagnosis App …

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