More than 3.1 million children die each year before they reach their 5th birthday. The reason - malnutrition. More than 150 million are too small for their age and at the same time obesitty is increasing in the world.
Malnutrition is the reason for more
than half of the death cases of
children worldwide. Each year aproximately 3.1 million children under 5 years
die because either they don't eat enough or they eat very imbalanced. The study was recently published in the
British medicinal journal Lancet.
The most widespread forms of malnutrition amongst children, but also their
mothers, are lack of vitamins and minerals such as zinc and iron, report
scientist from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in
Baltimore.
Additionally, researchers studied the physical development of children.
Worldwide, about 165 million were too short for their age in 2011, about 50 million too light for their
size and 100 million childred weighed
less than normal for their age. Espcecially families in Africa and Asia are
affected.
Malnutrition does not only impact the physical developmen of children in a
negative way. Other consequences for
instance are worse performances in school and even higher vulnerability against
infectious diseases.
According to the latest report of the UN-organisation for food and acriculture FAO, the longterm costs of malnutrition sum up to 3.5 trillion dollars annually.That's about 5% of the global economic output.
Worldwide 868 million people hunger, according to the numbers of the FAO. At the same time 1.4 billion people are overweight.
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