Child Development and Public Health

Nutrition/Malnutrition

Issues of poor health and hygiene, poverty, and malnutrition represent critical global challenges to young children’s healthy development and well-being. Poor health represents critical global challenges to young children’s healthy development and well-being, and my understanding of these topics has expanded and deepened because hunger is a daily reality for many. Tragically, more than 13,000 children under five die from causes related to malnutrition every day. Pregnant women, new mothers who breast-feed, and children are among those most at risk of undernourishment (Brain, 2010). Insufficient nutrition during critical growth phases is known to result in poor physical and cognitive development. Malnourishment can cause physical and mental stunting for life, further deepening the cycle of poverty. Moderately underweight children are more than four times more likely to die from infectious disease than are well-nourished children (Poverty, 2008).

           

Poverty contributes to malnutrition, which contributes to death in over half of children under five years old. The best start in life is essential not only to a child’s survival but to his/her physical, intellectual, and emotional development. At the moment it’s hard to imagine anything comparable happening in this country. (Brain, 2010) “To their credit and to the credit of John Edwards, who goaded them into it both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing new initiatives against poverty. But their proposals are modest in scope and far from central to their campaigns. I’m not blaming them for that; if a progressive wins this election, it will be by promising to ease the anxiety of the middle class rather than aiding the poor, and for a variety of reasons, health care, not poverty, should be the first priority of a Democratic administration” (Brain, 2010) .Some country has made progress meeting this Goal, but success is mixed.  India and China are on track to meet the income target at least, but in a classic example of national disparities, some 221 million people in India and 142 million in China are still chronically or acutely malnourished. More than half of undernourished people, 60 per cent are found in Asia and the Pacific. Thirty per cent of infants born in South Asia in 2003 were underweight, the highest percentage in the world (Poverty, 2008).


Malnutrition contributes to more than half of under-five deaths worldwide. Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5. (Development, 2010) Poverty hits the children hardest.. To be poor in America is to be an outcast in your own country. Neuroscientists tell us that this is what poisons a child’s brain. More than half of undernourished people, 60 per cent are found in Asia and the Pacific. Thirty per cent of infants born in South Asia in 2003 were underweight, the highest percentage in the world. Most sub-Saharan African countries will likely miss both targets. The region has 204 million hungry and is the only region of the world where hunger is increasing. More than 40 per cent of Africans cannot even get sufficient food on a day-to-day basis (Poverty, 2008).

             

References

Poverty Poisons the Brain" Retrieved from            http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html?em

UNICEF Child Survival and Development" Retrieved from
           

                http://www.unicef.org/childsurvival/index.html

Eradicate Extreme Hunger and Poverty” Retrieved from               

             http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html