"Child wasting" or child starvation in third-world countries isn't limited by the parameters once believed to be typical. Rainer Gross, PhD, is UNICEF's Chief of Nutrition and Patrick Webb, PhD and dean at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science (Tufts University) revealed five surprising facts about child starvation and severe malnutrition.
There are millions of wasted children under five years old, and numbers are rising.
Child wasting
Usually, children in famine-devastated countries are "wasting" away, as measured by their low weight-height ratio. New findings reveal that it's not only countries in crisis that have child malnutrition problems. Gross and Webb analyzed countries with the highest child mortality rates and found five characteristics that surprised them.
Five surprising facts
1. The majority of wasting doesn't occur in Africa Though the overall number of wasted children is increasing in Africa, the majority die in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Nearly 66% are in India alone; 78% suffer in the other three countries.
2. Political peace doesn't eradicate child malnutrition and death. The absence of conflict or political instability doesn't guarantee that children will eat. Stability, economic growth, and political transparency don't translate to healthy, nourished children. Conflict or famine alone doesn't cause death.
3. HIV doesn't contribute to wasted children. HIV and AIDS rates do negatively influence nutrition both directly from the disease itself and indirectly from household insecurity, scarcity of food, and lack of childcare. However, these diseases at this time don't directly contribute to severe malnutrition in kids. This fact corresponds to the first one. If the highest number of children affected by HIV is in Africa, but the most wasted children are in India, then there can't be a direct correlation between wasting and AIDS.
4. The growth of a wealthy nation doesn't necessarily save kids. The United Arab Emirates is an extremely rich nation, and has a 14% wasting rate of children. India and Brazil are growing economically at remarkable rates, according to Gross and Webb; yet the nutritional status of the children isn't improving.
5. Development agendas must tackle child wasting. To make a lasting impact on the well-being of children, typical political and economic agendas must extend beyond emergency situations like civil wars. The researchers state that the international community is more adept at providing aid to countries in emergency situations than assisting with typical development. The irony is that typical development situations have more need and greater potential for wasted children.
Solutions offered by Gross and Webb
- Improving nutrition in pregnant women
- Preventing low birth-weight babies
- Preventing infectious diseases
- Improving water and sanitation systems
- Promoting breast-feeding in infanthood
- Offering enhanced health and nutritional information
- Offering micronutrients as supplements
A few thoughts
The term "child wasting" seems very harsh! In developed countries like Canada, the United States, Australia, Europe and so on, we waste food and resources and goods and time and energy. In third-world countries, children are being wasted.
The cultural differences and influences are extremely different from one part of the world to another. Here in North America, we (generally speaking) focus on physical appearance, materialism, tv shows, movies, possessions, plastic surgery, clothes, Ipods, etc etc etc.
In India and Pakistan and Africa, they focus on surviving the day.
Source: Science Daily – Five Surprising Facts About Starvation That Could Change the International Agenda.
