In April 2023, mothers queued with their children at Gargar Health Centre in Garowe, Somalia. Nurses recorded each child's weight and height and checked for signs of malnutrition. Laki Mohamed, a mother of six, had walked two kilometres carrying her nine-month-old daughter Nadira.
Nadira had suffered vomiting and acute watery diarrhoea for more than ten days. Screening identified severe acute malnutrition; she was enrolled in an outpatient therapeutic feeding programme and given ready-to-use therapeutic food at no cost.
People in the queue appeared to share one purpose, but each examination could produce a different result. A brief sequence of weighing and measuring turned an everyday illness into an identified need for urgent treatment.