A simple tool to detect severe malnutrition: the MUAC tape

As COVID-19, climate change and conflict devastate family’s access to nutritious food, UNICEF is using simple yet innovative bands to detect severe malnutrition and save children’s lives.
Find out how mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) tapes are used to screen for malnutrition in community and hospital settings.
Learn more about UNICEF's Supply Division's work on our website: www.unicef.org....

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Reasons why I think the arm is such a good site to look for severe acute malnutrition are:
The arms are more easily accessible than the abdomen.
The abdomen can be affected by hydration status or edema, and dependent parts, such as the legs, can also be affected by edema.
During stress, the body catabolizes the peripheral regions before the visceral regions, so the arm, being peripheral, undergoes catabolism earlier than the visceral organs. Therefore, the loss in arm circumference is detected earlier than the overall loss in weight.
Additionally, measuring MUAC does not require weighing machines, and for some reasons that I don't understand, there are standardized and fixed cut-off values for all children between the ages of 6 months and 59 monthsq. For this reason, healthcare workers can make predictions without the use of complex graphs.