CAUSE OF MASS MALNOURISHMENT ============================== The reason Indian children so much more malnourished than their poorer counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa may be sanitation. An emerging body of scientific studies suggest that Vivek, and many of the 162 million other children under the age of five in the world who are malnourished, are suffering not so much a lack of food than poor sanitation.“These children’s bodies divert energy and nutrients away from growth and brain development to prioritise infection-fighting survival,” said Jean Humphrey, a professor of human nutrition. “When this happens during the first two years of life, children become stunted. What’s particularly disturbing is that the lost height and intelligence are permanent.”Two years ago, Unicef, the World Health Organisation and the World Bank released a major report on child malnutrition that focused entirely on a lack of food. Sanitation was not mentioned. Now, Unicef officials and those from other major charitable organisations said in interviews that they believe that poor sanitation may cause more than half of the world’s stunting problem.This research has quietly swept through many of the world’s nutrition and donor organisations in part because it resolves a great mystery: Why are Indian children so much more malnourished than their poorer counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa? A child raised in India is far more likely to be malnourished than one from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe or Somalia, the planets poorest countries. Stunting afflicts 65 million Indian children under the age of 5, including a third of children from the country’s richest families.This disconnect between wealth and malnutrition is so striking that economists have concluded that economic growth does almost nothing to reduce malnutrition.India is an increasingly risky place to raise children. The country’s sanitation and air quality are among the worst in the world. Half of India’s population, or at least 620 million people, defecate outdoors. Parasitic diseases and infections like tuberculosis, often linked with poor sanitation, are most common in India. More than 1 in 4 newborn deaths occur in India.Other developing countries have made huge strides in improving sanitation. Just 1 per cent of Chinese and 3 per cent of Bangladeshis relieve themselves outside compared with half of Indians. Attitudes may be just as important as access to toilets. Constructing and maintaining tens of millions of toilets in India would cost untold billions, a price many voters see no need to pay a recent survey found that many people prefer going to the bathroom outside. India’s government has for decades tried to resolve the country’s stubborn malnutrition problems by distributing vast stores of subsidised food. But more and better food has largely failed to reverse early stunting, studies have repeatedly shown.In the meantime, as Dr. Stephen Luby, a professor of medicine at Stanford University puts it, “I think we can all agree that it’s not a good idea to raise children surrounded by poop.” — New York Times News Service.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 01:29:52 +0000
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