Better Nutrition Could Save Millions of Kids-Study
http://www.laleva.org/eng/2004/06/better_nutrition_could_save_millions_of_kidsstudy.html
Thu Jun 17, 2004 08:02 AM ET
Souce: Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Malnutrition is to blame for more than half of all
the deaths of children around the world -- including deaths caused by
diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles, researchers said on Thursday.
Poor nourishment leaves children underweight and weakened and vulnerable to
infections that do not have to be fatal, the team at the World Health
Organization and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found.
They estimated that feeding all children worldwide an adequate diet would
prevent about 1 million deaths a year from pneumonia, 800,000 from
diarrhea, 500,000 from malaria, and 250,000 from measles.
"Malnutrition does not have to be severe to have a significant impact on
child health and survival," said Laura Caulfield, an associate professor
with the Bloomberg School's Center for Human Nutrition who led the study.
"Our analysis shows that even children who were small, but whose weight
would not classify them as malnourished, were twice as likely to die as
children in our reference group."
Her group analyzed the data from 10 studies of childhood deaths around the
world, and used complex formulas to extrapolate the effect of weight on
the likelihood of death.
They estimate that 52.5 percent of all deaths in young children were
attributable to undernourishment, with nearly 45 percent of measles
deaths and more than 60 percent of deaths from
diarrhea associated with low weight and poor
nutrition.
"These findings underscore the need to make the improvement of the
nutritional status of children a priority," they wrote in their study,
published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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