Their recent program is sized more like normal UCTs/CCTs to poor households which have historically been spent mostly on food. I'm wondering if DALYs averted due to malnutrition alone are enough to bring cost effectiveness below that of their regular season program that GW uses as a benchmark? Couple considerations:
- The short term nature of pandemic induced income shocks would reduce relapse rates below those seen historically.
- The big issue seems to be targeting. If 100% of money was spent on children with SAM, this would be on par with GW's top charities. If 100% were spent on children with MAM this would probably be between their top charities and regular-season GD. If 16% of Nairobi is under 5, this pre-COVID estimate suggests prevalence ~6% for the city so higher for the slums and higher still because of lockdowns and locusts. I will call GD on Monday and hopefully update this.
- We need to adjust for differences between RUTF and food, but I think not by much: see here (combines/cites many different sources)
- Other sources showing preventive impact of cash on malnutrition here and here.
Even if Nairobi itself won't have high enough % malnourished, it seems it would be a good exercise to build a CE calculation around for other areas they're expanding to (apparently Uganda and 5 other countries) as well as other programs. Can anyone help me out here?
