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New research co-led by the Center for Global Child Health at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) suggests that a new tool for use in low-resource settings can save lives and reduce the need for hospital stays among children receiving outpatient treatment for malnutrition.

The collaborative research team studied more than 10,000 young patients in Chad and found that for every 282 children for whom health care workers used a Responses to Illness Severity Quantification (RISQ) system, they could prevent one child from dying as compared to standard care. RISQ also decreased the total number of days children spent in the hospital by one-third.

The results of the study were published in The Lancet Primary Care.

RISQ is adapted from an early warning system developed at SickKids to support clinical care at the bedside by providing an additional safety net for children whose conditions worsen while they are in the hospital. RISQ has been evaluated in a large-scale international trial, with findings showing its potential to save the lives of children receiving treatment for malnutrition.

"Community-based health workers see and treat many children, need to make decisions quickly and their decisions have significant implications for families who must balance the risks and disruptions of journeying to a regional hospital 'just in case' or staying local with the possibility of the child's condition deteriorating," says Dr.

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