Child malnutrition - Research Paper Example

Some of the worst cases are in the regions of sub-Saharan Africa (in countries such as Botswana, Burundi and Nigeria) and in South Asia (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) but there are also packets of malnutrition in areas like Southeast Asia (Cambodia and Laos) or in Latin America (Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru). Child malnutrition can start at the infant stage when there is no or very poor breast feeding is available. This can persist as the child grows up and has an irreversible impact on a child’s health by age two.

Malnourished children grow up into adults with some serious health problems such as tuberculosis and increasing the risk of infection to a variety of diseases. The issue of child malnutrition has a knock-on effect on an individual starting with lowered brain functions resulting in impaired educational achievement which in turn results into a failure to gain the right education in order to get decent jobs and earn a respectable income. This paper discusses the issue of child malnutrition from a global perspective, what the charities and aid organizations are doing to help kids and evaluate how effective these aid programs are.

Discussion Child malnutrition has taken center stage in the world’s attention because it had crept up again, with the number of malnourished children increasing. Various causes of this are to frequent conflicts that destroy the delivery of basic government services. In the past period, especially during 1950-2000, there was a significant reduction in the prevalence of children’s malnutrition worldwide especially in the group of developing countries (Smith & Haddad 61). Vast improvements in women’s education, women’s social status, national food availability, a rise in incomes and attainment of democratic freedoms contributed to the reduction (ibid.) and the most significant improvements were achieved in the region of East and Southeast Asia.

In these two regions lived some 2.1 billion inhabitants (with China alone at 1.3 billion people). The reduction in child malnutrition prevalence was due extremely rapid reduction in the child mortality rates from migrations, urbanization, increased access to education and an aggressive family-health and maternal-health intervention program (Attane & Barbiere 7). Global Issue – child malnutrition has attracted the focus of efforts from the WHO as it is one of the leading preventable causes of death among children.

In particular, about half of all child deaths (estimated between 4.6 and 5.0 million annually) are caused by malnutrition. Diarrhea is a major risk factor in child malnutrition that results from the lack of safe drinking water in developing countries, especially for children under five years old (Oloo 3). Diarrhea is the most prevalent in developing countries and accounts for a high proportion of sickness and death among children because of its strong correlation to malabsorption of nutrients (The World Bank 22).

A lack of iodine has been identified as a leading preventable cause of child’s mental impairment which is estimated to reduce the intelligence quotient by10-15 points in a case of another preventable cause of malnutrition that requires only little financial resources which developing countries could very well afford even without outside aid. Child Malnutrition in Somalia –