Child Malnutrition

Despite the vast research on nutrition and health, malnutrition is still a major fatality in this present day. Policymakers, social scientist and medical experts have expressed alarm about the growing problem. While most agree that the issue deserves attention, consensus dissolves around how to respond and resolve the problem. Malnourishment continues to be a primary health liability in developing nations such as Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. It is globally the most significant risk factor for illness and death, predominantly with hundreds of millions of pregnant women

As a main theme in Hunger and Shame, child malnutrition is a serious problem that has affected many different societies. Child malnutrition is a complicated concept that often has many causes; each society is different and must be studied closely to fully understand the reason for such a horrific epidemic. Focusing on the Chagga population, many factors catalyzed the epidemic including environmental, cultural, and global.

Select a global health issue impacting the international health community. Briefly describe the global health issue and its impact on the larger health care system (i.e., continents, regions, countries, states, and health departments). How can health care delivery systems work collaboratively to address global health concerns?

Starvation is a global concern that affects millions of children every day. It is also the top cause of death for children under the age of four, it takes the lives of more than 3.5 million children every year. Furthermore, without a treatment,

“What does malnutrition look like? Most of us think of bloated bellies or skin and bones, but the appearance of a hungry child might surprise you. Internationally hunger often stunts growth. Imagine a 9-year-old who appears to be only 5” (“Feed the Children.” Feed). Almost 1 billion kids worldwide live in poverty and 1 in 4 children around the world suffer from malnutrition that stunts growth (“Feed the Children.” Give). This is a very big problem not only in America but everywhere else, malnutrition is the cause of almost half of child deaths each year around the world (“Feed the Children.” Give). It is close to impossible for a malnourished child to recover from diarrhea or to fight off a small illness because their immune system is just simply too weak (“Feed the Children.”

Malnutrition causes nearly half of all deaths in children under five. (Food Aid Foundation.) Millions of children, gone, into thin air. As if they never existed. Millions of stories, millions of futures, all dead, uncared for. More than 795 million people do not have access to enough food to live a healthy lifestyle. (Food Aid Foundation.) Potential scientists, doctors, and musicians will never be able to achieve their goals because they can’t even obtain food. In Haiti, a small central-american country, one out of every three children lose the ability to grow because of malnourishment (Naq, Oishimaya Sen.). The severity of malnourishment in Haiti causes Haitian children to acquire many terminal diseases and blood deficiencies (Naq, Oishimaya

Many children in this world suffer everyday in very different ways. Suffering ways could be the loss of shelter or having a very chronic disease. “We could start with hunger and malnutrition, which kill 3.1 million children under the age of five every year” (McGowan 8). Hunger is considered one of those ways and also causes other suffering barriers. Hunger is the craving and want of food. At times hunger causes a person to become very weak. Hunger has caused many child deaths throughout the centuries. Hunger is thought to only occur in underdeveloped countries, but that thought is wrong. There are a lot of children going through hunger in developed

The issue is to a point where, “incidence of child malnutrition reaches 80%,” over half of the population of this country's children are not getting the proper nutrients to sustain their growing bodies (Economist 1). The incredibly high number is likely due to the high cost of importing food into the country, causing many families to live off the local food products in their cities. In a case study in Antigua, Guatemala, a mother tells reporters she, “could not afford formula so she gave her sugar water,” a substance that will fill the child’s belly but leave her without the vital nutrient her body needs (Gowen). A small child cannot eat the large food provided by the United States government, and still require the protein found in baby formula. Without a reliable source of food, malnutrition will continue to appear in the children of the region. The regional spikes in the rate of malnutrition are incredibly difficult to

World Food Summit defines food security as: “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”. (World Food Summit, 1996) On the contrary, the food insecurity means the situation people who are lack of food or nutrition. A person who lives in such situation for a very long time cannot access enough nutritious food to be healthy. Additionally, food insecurity can be chronic, seasonal or transitory (FAO, 2000). At present, the

A large problem of childhood poverty is malnutrition. Since these children are growing up in poverty, many of the parents have a hard time supplying food for their kids. Surprisingly, there

Malnutrition is defined as a lack of proper nutrition, caused by not having enough to eat, not eating enough of the right things, or being unable to use the food that one does eat. This is another environmental factor in which children of poor families are at a great disadvantage due to the fact that it tends to occur most in those confronting the adverse socioeconomic and environmental conditions typically associated with poverty. It has become widely known that malnutrition may lead to increased early child mortality, impairment of physical growth and substantial destruction to brain development. In addition, the short-term implications of malnutrition lead to long term complications and cognitive delays such as attention deficit disorder, impaired school performance, decreased IQ scores, memory deficiency, learning disabilities, reduced social skills, reduced language development, and reduced problem-solving abilities. It has even been argued that nutrition may be the single greatest environmental influence on babies in the womb, during infancy, and throughout the first years of life.

Childhood and adolescence are expected to be the times of great functioning and physical health, yet poverty provokes this from occurring and children face poor health. Children living in poverty are at immense risk for their development, health and overall well-being. According to Komro, 2011, the absolute rate of poverty among children is higher in the United States than in other industrialized nations. Nationally, One in five children are living in poverty (Raphel, 2014). Malnourishment is one of the numerous outcomes from poverty; children are suffering each day in America with this threat to their health. Malnourishment is a result of either not having sufficient nutrients in their diet or having it excessively that it causes health problems.

When analyzing a certain population with concerns, an individual must consider all factors that lead to a certain outcome. Having an adequate diet and being able to access food is important for development and healthy living (Morin, 2014). Morin (2014) states that food insecurity and security are defined when analyzing the context of a household in terms of a scale. Food security is placed at the high end or near the high end of the scale where there is an ease of accessibility to safe and nutritious foods, no anxiety related to accessing food, healthy eating patterns and being able to attain food without utilizing food banks, stealing or foraging through garbage. In contrast, food insecurity is at the other end of the scale in which food security is low or very low (Morin, 2014). Food insecurity is defined as having a limitation or uncertain availability of food that is nutritional and safe to consume or having a limitation or uncertain way of acquiring food that is acceptable by society (Schroeder & Smaldone, 2015). Assessment in a low-income population group reveals that the issue of food insecurity is one that is most prominent (Brown, Noonan & Nord, 2007). This research shows that food insecurity has a direct relationship with poverty, socio-economic status and low income. Although the issue of food insecurity is global, the focus of this analysis will be on the low-income population in developed countries.

Food insecurity in children have severe impacts to their growth and development. Moreover, nutritious food is critical for a child's physical and psychological development. Without nutritious food kids can develop obesity, abnormalities related to the deficiencies, and compromised immune systems. Therefore, they can have poorer academic outcomes, chronic conditions, hyperactivity, and inattention. Nurses will be one of the first to observe the impacts of child poverty on the children they care

Food security is historically defined as the overall regional, national as well as global food supply and shortfalls in supply as associated to requirements (Foster, 1992). The same author contended that, even though, the increased observation of differences in the sufficiency of food intake by certain groups despite overall adequacy of supply, the term has been applied recently at a local, household, or individual level and it has been widened beyond notions of food supply to include elements of access (Sen, 1981), vulnerability (Watts and Bohle, 1993), and sustainability (Chambers, 1989). Different organizations, scholars and institutions define food security differently. However, basic concept remains the same.