Pediatric malnutrition treatment –
reimagined for scale.

We follow the evidence to save the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children.

Acute malnutrition is the leading cause of
childhood deaths globally.

Taimaka has reimagined pediatric malnutrition treatment by making it more cost-effective and scalable. We’ve developed a treatment model that is:

  1. 53% cheaper than legacy approaches

  2. Simpler, so that digitally-enabled community health workers (CHWs) can deliver care directly to the most vulnerable communities. 

Our model is one of the most cost-effective ways to save lives in the world

$251

Cost-Per-Child
Legacy Approaches

Over 20 years ago, public health experts developed an effective model for treating childhood malnutrition. The problem is – it’s far too expensive. The clinically complexities and high costs ($251+ per child) of legacy treatment options mean that more than 75% of children go untreated. In Nigeria alone, more than two million children suffer from severe acute malnutrition every year. 1.5 million+ of those children do not get treatment, resulting in 192,000 preventable deaths annually. 

$94

Cost-Per-Child
Taimaka’s Model

Taimaka has redesigned malnutrition treatment so that it can save more lives. Our model drops the average cost per child treated to just $94 (a more than 50% reduction). We do it by working through community health workers (CHWs) – rather than doctors and nurses – and leveraging cutting-edge public health research. We equip our CHWs with a digital tool to triage children, ensuring world-class quality of care. We estimate it costs between $1,421 to $1,644 to save a life with our treatment program

We build on the strengths of the existing healthcare system.

Here’s how it works…

Step One: Community Mobilization

Community mobilizers and community leaders travel to identify cases. If they find cases of severe acute malnutrition (SAM), they refer them to our clinics, located in government primary healthcare facilities.

Step Two: Outpatient Care

We train community health workers (CHWs) and provide them with a simple digital tool to ensure consistent quality of care, without having to rely on nurses and doctors. These CHWs provide therapeutic foods, medicines, and vaccinations to help a child recover over the course of 6-10 weekly visits.

Step Three: Inpatient Care

Some children have complications in addition to malnutrition – like severe malaria or life-threatening infections. We immediately refer these children to higher levels of care at existing government hospitals where nurses and doctors can stabilize them. When these children are stable enough to return home, they return to outpatient care.

We know it works.

95%

of the children in our treatment program fully recover.

$1,644

to save a life, meaning that we’re treating many children who wouldn’t have made it otherwise. This figure is on par with GiveWell top charities.

7,000+

children treated so far with our model, out of existing government clinics in northeastern Nigeria.

“Taimaka combines the rigor of academia with the dynamism of a startup.”

Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), University of California, Berkeley

What’s next?

Expand our program to treat more children

Over the next three years, we’ll expand our program to treat more children across Gombe State, Nigeria. This expansion will allow us to treat 50,000 of the sickest children in the world, while proving our model over a wider geographic area. We’ll expand by building on our current partnership the Gombe State Government, with whom we partner to work out of existing government healthcare facilities.

Bring our model to other organizations

We want to go beyond our own program to reach more children with our model. To do that, we plan to bring our model to existing government programs and nonprofits that already treat 13.7 million children a year using outdated approaches. We’re planning to transform existing government programs with digitally-enabled community health workers (CHWs) and simpler protocols to reach two million+ more children.

Join Us

Save a Life, Today.

$94 can treat a child with acute malnutrition in our program, and because many of those children will die absent treatment, $1,644 will save a life.

Get in Touch

Our intervention is one of the most cost-effective ways to save a life. Interested in scaling our work?

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