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Being Stunted Children Essay

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Situated in Eastern Europe, the Republic of Armenia is a lower/middle income country with around 3 million people population. According to the most recent research data, 32% of the population lives below the national poverty level. As poverty levels have significantly decreased in recent years, malnutrition is still spread in Armenia, especially among young generation. Here are some facts which can clearly present the malnutrition situation in Republic of Armenia (20).
1. According to World Bank research, approximately 5.3 percent of Armenian children under the age of 5 are underweight and undernourished.
2. Each one from five Armenian children has stunting.
Stunting or chronic malnutrition is a condition caused by long term undernutrition. A stunted child is shorter than normal for his/her age. The stunted child is more vulnerable to diseases, he/she can also have cognitive problems and disabilities. The effects of stunting can be irreversible after some certain age.
3. Children from both poor and wealthy families are malnourished. …show more content…

Kim Hekimian, an Armenian lecturer in the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, states that increasing educational level of family could have an enormous influence on decreasing rates of undernutrition in children. “We want to measure the knowledge of caregivers—mothers and grandmothers—because they probably don’t know about the importance of iron and protein for little ones, [they think] that bread and potatoes are filling, nutritious, and relatively cheap”

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