The NY Times has an extremely sad article this morning on the devastating effects of malnutrition on children in Africa.

The article is titled “Malnutrition is Cheating it’s Survivors, and Africa’s Future”.


Most people know that thousands of children still die of malnutrition and starvation every year in Africa and in other impoverished parts of the world, but as the article points out, little attention is paid to the effects of malnutrition on those that survive.

The article states...

Yet almost half of Ethiopia’s children are malnourished, and most do not die. Some suffer a different fate. Robbed of vital nutrients as children, they grow up stunted and sickly, weaklings in a land that still runs on manual labor. Some become intellectually stunted adults, shorn of as many as 15 I.Q. points, unable to learn or even to concentrate, inclined to drop out of school early.

While only 3 percent of children in the United States are malnourished, the numbers in Ethiopia and the rest of Africa are staggering, and the affects of those numbers of malnourished children on Africa’s future are heart breaking.

Another 3.5 million children lack sufficient iodine, which can lower a child’s I.Q. by 10 or more points. More than a half million suffer vitamin A deficiency, which cripples young immune systems; merely ensuring adequate vitamin A can lower child mortality by more than one- fifth. Children lacking vitamin B12, regularly measured nowhere in Africa, have impaired cognitive skills and do poorly on tests.

In most foods, these vital nutrients exist in traces — vitamins A and B12, iron, iodine, folic acid. Denied them in the womb and in infancy, children suffer irreversible brain and nervous-system damage, even if they appear well fed.

“Even trained people can’t always see them,” said Mark Fryars, the director of program services for the Micronutrient Initiative. “You may see a kid whose skin is very pale. You may go into a classroom where a child wanders off, or falls asleep, or doesn’t go out to play because he’s too tired. Multiply that into whole villages, and that translates into an impact on the society.”

While this article is focusing on Ethiopia and Africa, similar situations exist in many other countries and areas of the world.

Continued in next post...