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A billion hungry people

Poor nutrition stunts growth of 200 million children.

By Louis Charbonneau

Pic: iStockphoto.com

Article originally in Reuters

Nearly 200 million children in developing countries suffer from stunted growth and health problems due to poor nutrition in their early years, the U.N. children's foundation UNICEF said on Wednesday.

However, the percentage of children with retarded growth in Asia fell to 30% last year from 44% in 1990, and in Africa to 34% from 38% over the same period, UNICEF said in a report.

Despite a decline in the rate of the problem, 195 million children in developing countries under 5 years old have stunted growth due to poor nutrition during the critical period between their conception and 2nd birthdays, UNICEF said.

Undernourished children often have poor physical health and slower mental development. When the problem is widespread, as in India and Afghanistan, it undermines those countries' ability to improve their economies and eradicate poverty.

"Undernutrition steals a child's strength and makes illnesses that the body might otherwise fight off far more dangerous," UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said in a statement.

"More than one third of children who die from pneumonia, diarrhoea and other illnesses could have survived had they not been undernourished," she said.

More than 90% of the developing world's children facing stunted growth live in Africa and Asia, the report said. A third of them - roughly 60.8 million - are in India.

UNICEF said that countries with the highest prevalence of stunted growth among children under the age of five include Afghanistan (59%), Yemen (58%), Guatemala and East Timor (both 54%), Democratic Republic of the Congo (46%) and North Korea (45%).

India, the world's second most-populous country, continues to have a high rate of children under 5 years old suffering from retarded growth, though it fell from around 52% in 1992-1993 to 43% in 2005-2006, UNICEF said.

Veneman told reporters on a conference call that roughly 8.8 million children are dying every year from largely preventable causes and poor nutrition is a contributing factor in more than a third of those deaths.

She added that the issue of access to proper nutrition for impoverished children and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers was related to the larger issue of poor food security in a world where some 1 billion people are hungry or malnourished.

The 1,000 days from conception until a child's 2nd birthday are the most important for growth and development, the report said. Insufficient nutrition during this period can permanently harm the body's ability to ward off and overcome diseases and damage a child's social and mental development.

Stunted growth, UNICEF said, can rarely be corrected. However, Veneman said it can be prevented and programs to improve access to iodized salt and vitamin A supplements in Africa and Asia have improved the situation in some countries - and led to a reduction in infant and child mortality.

Read more on: unicef | hunger | child | poor

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Joe

11/20/2009 3:30 PM

There is a big international drive to eradicate hunger by feeding the problem, literally. The hungry mouths and begging bowls are not the problem: uncontrolled breeding is. Until mankind faces up to the challenge, and FORCE people not to have children they cannot look after, nothing will change. I, for one, refuse to have sympathy with a symptom. Fix the problem! You don't even have to lift a finger to fix it either: all you need to do is stop feeding the problem, and the problem will sort itself out in no time at all... Harsh, but it's the only thing that'll work. Until the real problem is addresses, I refuse to feel guilty about their plight, or contribute to the problem by handing over more of my resources in the form of AID.

@tony

11/20/2009 2:18 PM

BRAVO, Tony! You've pinpointed precisely what is needed - less support for the mad breeding practices of the lazy, promiscuous, and uneducable masses, and the adoption of a practical approach. Simply put: "if you can't feed them, don't BREED them!" - sadly, though, paying mere lip-service to sense, and being politically correct by supporting the starving masses is far more likely to happen - people generally don't think further than they are forced to...

tony serafin

11/20/2009 12:53 PM

Might I suggest that those institutions (OXFAM and the like) spend more time solving the problem of unnecessary pregnancies. As long as thesse peoples have UNICEF and those other stupid organisations bailing them out they'll carry on having more and more offspring. and i thought you lot were enlightened/intelligent!! the problem you face is akin to watching a child take bucket after bucket of water from the sea...... !!!! Eradicate poverty....get real....simply an excuse to "show" that something (?) is being done !! Ho hum.