Malnutrition
To date, over 800 million people, roughly twenty percent of the
world’s population, live in ‘absolute poverty’. From this number, 200
million children below the age of five living in developing countries suffer from sickness
brought about by hunger including severe malnutrition problems. An estimated of 12 million
will die within the year due to starvation or by some other sickness resulting from
malnutrition. The remaining who survives will face a harder future, as they would have to
cope with physical as well as mental ailments from malnutrition.
Malnutrition is implicated majority of all mortalities. It is found in all
societies, most commonly identified with the poor. The problem of malnutrition contributes
to half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious disease
since the Black Death. During the early 80’s, media dramatically portrayed the hunger
of Africa – children all over the streets, skin and bone with their bloated bellies,
too weak to even get up – and brought to clear view the plague of malnutrition. Yet
the problem itself is neither contagious nor unavoidable.
During its early years, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the
United Nations (FAO) used the term "undernutrition" to indicate an inadequate
intake of calories (John W. Warnock). "Malnutrition" was medically defined as
the deficiency of other essential nutrients of the body, particularly protein, vitamins,
or minerals. In underdeveloped countries, malnutrition is immediately equated to a
deficiency in caloric intake caused by food deprivation.
The most common problems in underdeveloped countries today are marasmus
and kwashiorkor. Marasmus, otherwise known as infantile athropy, athepsia or pedathropy,
is a severe chronic undernutrition in children and infants caused by caloric deficiency.
Children of undernourished mothers are born with less weight than the average, and need
more nutritional intake than international nutrition standards. With the presence of
marasmus, the child experiences an increase of total body water along with a depletion of
electrolyte commonly known as edema. Along with this, the patient becomes susceptible to
hypothermia, or circulatory failure. Perhaps the most serious effect of this ailment is
the stunting of the children’s growth, particularly in brain development.
Marasmus-inflicted children often have a reduced number of brain cells as well as brain
sizes.
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