Malnutrition In Children

Malnutrition has long been recognized as a consequence of poverty. It is widely accepted that high rates of malnutrition are found in areas where widespread chronic poverty (ADB, 2001). Malnutrition is the result of marginal dietary intake compounded by infection. In turn, marginal food intake is caused by household food insecurity, lack of drinking water, lack of knowledge about good hygiene and lack of alternative sources of income. It is also aggravated by the lack of care, gender inequality, health services, and poor environment. While income is not the sum total of people's lives, health status as reflected by the level of malnutrition.

Because having good health is an important prerequisite for escaping poverty and because health and sanitation contribute to growth, investment in population health and nutritional status is essential for improving the general welfare of a country, promote economic growth and poverty reduction (World Bank 1993). Meeting basic needs in health and nutritional needs of children are essential to achieving sustainable development. In the United Kingdom and a number of Western European countries about half of economic growth achieved between 1790 and 1980 was attributed to better nutrition and improved health and sanitary conditions (Fugel, 1994)

Malnutriton in childhood is known to have significant long-term work capacity and intellectual performance of adults. The health consequences of inadequate nutrition are enormous. It has been estimated that nearly 30% of infants, children, adolescents, adults and elderly in the developing world suffer from one or more of the multiple forms of malnutrition, 49% of the 10 million deaths among children under 5 each year in the developing world are associated with malnutrition, another 51% of them associated with infections and other causes (WHO, 1999). Recent studies have also pointed out that women who were malnourished as children are more likely to give birth to babies of low birth weight and therefore there is an intergenerational effect of child malnutrition.

A practical advantage of the use of child malnutrition as an indicator of poverty on the income level is that this measure should not be adjusted for inflation and would not be constrained by a lack of data on prices. Measures of child nutritional status can help capture aspects of welfare such as the distribution within the household who are not adequately reflected in other indicators. standards of child malnutrition are applicable in all cultures and ethnicities.

Studies show that the relationship between nutritional status of children and poverty is high at the lower end of the income range. The increase in GNP per capita of $ 300 to $ 600 is associated with a decreased prevalence of underweight by about 34% to 17% or a reduction of approximately 50% (UN ACC / SCN, 1992) . Data evaluation of GNP per capita and the prevalence of underweight preschool children of the World Report on the development as shown in Figure 1 [PDF 126.5KB | 1 page] shows that countries with the lowest ranking of GNP per capita are more likely to have greater prevalence of underweight children2.

A study by IFPRI in 2000 learned of 63 developing countries during this 25 - year-end on the determinants of child malnutrition in different regions have found four determinants of child malnutrition. The four, classified according to their strength of impact is the education of women, the national food supply, the situation of women relative to men, and environmental quality of health (Smith and Haddad, 2000). The results of this study confirm that the malnutrition of children as an indicator of poverty is a comprehensive indicator that reflects the sign and other desirable outcomes that improve the development of women's empowerment int.