Malnutrition

-photo from nytimes.com (infant is 5 months old)


There is an article in the New York Times worth reading. It is about malnutrition in Ethiopia (specifically in a city north of Addis Ababa called Shimider.) You can find it here.

Some statistics outlined in the article are as follows;

Malnutrition still kills here, though Ethiopia’s infamous famines are in abeyance. In Wag Hamra alone, the northern area that includes Shimider, at least 10,000 children under age 5 died last year, thousands of them from malnutrition-related causes.

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.

Nearly 6 in 10 are stunted; 10-year-olds can fail to top an adult’s belt buckle.

They are frequently sick: diarrhea, chronic coughs and worse are standard for toddlers here.

Five million African children under age 5 died last year — 40 percent of deaths worldwide — and malnutrition was a major contributor to half of those deaths.

One in 15 pregnant women experiences night blindness, indicating vitamin A deficiency and a diet devoid of protein and red or yellow fruits and vegetables.