Nutrition
Understanding RUTF: Ghana’s lifeline for malnourished children
EVERY year, thousands of children across Ghana face the harsh realities of Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM), a condition that weakens their immunity, disrupts growth, affects brain development, and puts their lives at risk. While families often strive to provide the best they can, the rising cost of food, inadequate dietary diversity, and limited access to nutrition services have made malnutrition an increasingly complex challenge. Amid this struggle, one intervention has stood out as a game changer: Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF).
RUTF is a specially formulated, nutrient-packed therapeutic paste used to treat children suffering from severe malnutrition. Typically made from peanuts, milk powder, vegetable oil, sugar, and a precise blend of vitamins and minerals, RUTF provides every nutrient a severely malnourished child needs to recover rapidly.
What makes RUTF extraordinary is not just its nutritional composition, but its practicality. It requires no cooking, no mixing with water, and no refrigeration, all of which make it ideal for families in communities where clean water, electricity, and food storage are major challenges.
Health professionals consider RUTF one of the most effective treatment tools in global child health. In Ghana, its use within the Community-Based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM) programme has allowed caregivers to administer treatment at home while receiving periodic monitoring from health workers. This approach dramatically reduces hospital congestion, cuts costs for families who would otherwise travel long distances for care, and allows children to heal in the comfort of familiar surroundings.
In addition, RUTF supports early recovery by improving appetite, restoring energy, and ensuring steady weight gain, which is critical factors for long-term healthy development. Understanding what RUTF is and why it matters is essential as Ghana continues to confront rising cases of childhood malnutrition linked to economic hardships, climate shocks, and gaps in nutrition governance. RUTF is more than food; it is a lifeline. It is a second chance for children whose futures are threatened not by disease or injury, but by the simple lack of nutritious meals.
Feature article by Women, Media and Change under its Nourish Ghana: Advocating for Increased Leadership to Combat Malnutrition 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
