MUAC Community Website

Teaching-aids At Low Cost (TALC) have a range of insertion tapes and MUAC accessories for sale ...

Colour-banded MUAC strap : Insertion tape for measuring MUAC. Colour-coded for children aged 6 - 59 months. Suitable for use in CTC / CMAM programs. Can also be used for pregnant women and adults.

Plain MUAC Strap : Insertion tape for measuring MUAC. Can be used for children, pregnant women, and adults and are long enough (39 cm) to be used to measure chest circumference in neonates. These tapes are particularly useful in situations where the standard admission cut-points are inappropriate. For example, a cut-point of 130 mm might be used for discharge from a CTC / CMAM program. The straps take colour well from pencil crayons or permanent markers allowing situation-specific colour-banded straps to be produced in low volumes at low cost.

Long insertion tape : A 100 cm long insertion tape. This tape would be useful for measuring chest, head, and thigh circumference in children and adults.

MUAC recognition tubes : A range of different diameter plastic tubes for those interested in learning to feel an arm with finger and thumb to assess nutritional status.

About TALC : The small NGO TALC (Teaching-aids At Low Cost) is now 45 years old. In the first 20 years it distributed slides with interactive scripts and has distributed seven million transparencies. Since use of slides declined, TALC has concentrated more on books. TALC has a regularly updated catalogue of around 250 carefully selected books for different levels of health worker. TALC believes in the importance of future generations and has around 75 books for teaching health to children in schools largely through readers. TALC also provides a number of small items such as MUAC straps (see above), double-ended spoons for ORS preparation, and a simple ophthalmoscope. Since 2001 it has been involved in creating and distributing the e-TALC free CD-ROMS. These are immensely popular and TALC has distributed almost 70,000 CD-ROMS, a half going to Africa. They are broad in content with material for senior physicians &c. but also for those working at village level. TALC also offers, with every book order, a choice of one from 25 free CD-ROMS donated to TALC. Visit the TALC website for more information.

An alternative source of MUAC straps can be found in this story.