Nutrition
The Life-Saving Power of RUTF and Why It Matters for Ghana’s Children
Introduction:
Malnutrition has quietly become one of Ghana’s most urgent public health threats. Though it may not always dominate headlines like infectious diseases, its effects on children under five are devastating, impacting physical growth, cognitive development, academic potential, and long-term productivity.
What is RUTF?
Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) is a groundbreaking innovation in treating malnutrition. Each sachet contains a scientifically formulated blend of energy, healthy fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals, compacted into a highly absorbable paste.
Malnourished children often have weak digestive systems, making it difficult for their bodies to process ordinary foods or hospital diets. RUTF bypasses these challenges, delivering nutrients in a form the body can immediately use for healing and rebuilding.
Rapid Impact and Benefits:
- Energy levels rise, appetite returns, and weight gain is often noticeable within days.
- Helps prevent complications such as infections, stunting, and developmental delays.
- Can be administered safely at home, reducing the need for frequent hospital visits.
- Frees health facilities to focus on the most critical cases.
Effectiveness:
Studies across Africa show recovery rates of over 80% when RUTF is used correctly. By shortening recovery time, children return to normal growth patterns, rejoin school, and regain the vitality necessary for healthy development.
Why It Matters for Ghana:
RUTF is more than a medical intervention—it’s an investment in the nation’s future. Children who recover from severe malnutrition are more likely to thrive academically, contribute economically, and grow into healthier adults.
The long-term social and economic benefits ripple far beyond households, strengthening Ghana’s human capital and making RUTF a strategic national priority.
By: Women, Media and Change – Nourish Ghana Project
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Ingredients
• 5 cups of white cooked rice
• 5 tablespoonful of oil
• 2 pounds of chicken (drum sticks)
• 3/4 teaspoonful of grounded ginger
• Salt to taste
• 1/4 teaspoonful ground pepper
• 1 large onion
• 2 large garlic
• 1 cup frozen peas and carrots
• 5 large eggs
• 3 large carrot
• 5 tablespoonful soy sauce
• 3 tablespoonful of chopped green onions
Preparation
- Cut chicken into pieces and put it on fire in a pan
- Add ginger, salt and pepper to chicken
- Allow it to cook for five minutes
- Put a saucepan on fire and pour 2 tablespoonful of oil
- Add cooked chicken to the oil and fry
- Add eggs, diced onion, garlic, peas and carrots and stir
- Add cooked rice to vegetables and stir
- Sprinkle soy sauce and stir
- Serve dish with shito, hot pepper or sauce
By Linda Abrefi Wadie
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Despite RUTF’s proven ability to save lives, access to it in Ghana remains inconsistent. Many caregivers face long travel distances to treatment centres, only to be told that supplies have run out. Others rely on community health workers who do their best but struggle with stock shortages. The core challenge is simple: RUTF in Ghana depends heavily on donors, and when global priorities shift or funding gaps emerge, children suffer.
RUTF’s which stands for Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food is a high-energy, micronutrient-rich food paste designed to treat severe acute malnutrition in children. This raises an important question: why is a life-saving product, essential to child survival, not covered under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)?
Including RUTF in NHIS would mark a monumental shift in how Ghana approaches child health. Firstly, it would ensure that access to RUTF becomes a national obligation, not an act of charity. Severe acute malnutrition is a medical condition, just like malaria, pneumonia, or diabetes, and must be treated as such. With RUTF included in the NHIS medicines list, families would be guaranteed treatment without depending on unpredictable donor supplies.
Secondly, integrating RUTF into NHIS is cost-effective. Untreated malnutrition leads to complications such as severe infections, developmental delays, and prolonged hospital admissions, all of which are far more expensive for the health system than early intervention. Investing in RUTF through NHIS would reduce long-term healthcare costs while strengthening Ghana’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 2 and SDG 3.
Thirdly, including RUTF in the scheme would help eliminate inequities. Currently, access varies by region. Children in remote or hard-to-reach communities often suffer the most. When RUTF is made universally available, every child is guaranteed treatment when they need it.
Additionally, NHIS coverage of RUTF would help streamline procurement systems, improve supply chain consistency and strengthen accountability mechanisms, a gap that currently undermines national nutrition efforts.
At its core, this is an issue of fairness, governance, and national responsibility. If Ghana truly prioritises child survival, then RUTF must be placed where it belongs, that is, within the NHIS as an essential, guaranteed treatment.
Feature article by Women, Media and Change under its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition project
