Why Malnutrition in Children Needs to be Addressed Urgently

The difference between the nutrients your body needs to function and the amount of nutrition you take is known as malnutrition. Child malnutrition is the leading cause of death for between three and five million children under the age of five. When a child’s diet fails to provide all of the nutrients the body requires to function normally, not only does growth slow but susceptibility to common diseases increases.

Malnutrition in children can result from a general shortage of calories or from a lack of protein, vitamins, or minerals. It’s also possible that you consume more calories than your body knows what to do with. 

To maintain its tissues and carry out its numerous duties, your body needs a range of nutrients in the right amounts. When these requirements aren’t met by the food it receives, malnutrition in children occurs. You can be undernourished if you don’t get enough nutrients overall. Your body can suffer major health effects even from a single vitamin or mineral deficiency. On the other hand, having too many nutrients might also lead to health issues for malnourished kids.

Types of Malnutrition

Undernutrition or overnutrition are both forms of malnutrition in children. It can also refer to an unbalanced intake of micronutrients or macronutrients. There are four types of malnutrition: 

Undernutrition

When most people think of malnutrition, they picture undernutrition. Nutrient deficit results in undernutrition. If your diet is insufficient or your body has difficulties absorbing enough nutrients from your meals, you may be undernourished. Both apparent and invisible muscle and fat wasting can result from undernutrition. You can be malnourished and overweight.

Undernutrition in Macronutrients

The lack of proteins, carbs, and fats is also known as protein-energy undernutrition. The primary dietary components known as macronutrients are the nutrients your body needs to produce energy and maintain itself. Your body quickly starts to fall apart without them, or even with only one of them missing, destroying tissues and turning off unnecessary processes to conserve its energy.

Micronutrient Malnourishment

Micronutrients are required by your body at lower levels, but they are nonetheless necessary for a variety of processes, as they can severely affect malnourished kids. Due to a lack of variety in their diets, many people have moderate deficiencies in a number of vitamins and minerals. A modest vitamin deficiency may not be noticeable to you, but as micronutrient undernutrition worsens, it can start to have serious and long-lasting impacts.

Overnutrition

To acknowledge the potentially harmful health impacts of excessive nutrient ingestion, the World Health Organisation recently added overnutrition to its definition of malnutrition. This covers the consequences of being classified as malnourished kids, which have a number of noncommunicable diseases in common (NCDs). It also covers the toxicity that can be brought on by consuming too much of a particular vitamin.

Factors Affecting Malnutrition

Food Instability

Child malnutrition is exacerbated by food instability and a lack of access to wholesome meals. Additionally, the consumption of unhealthy food with lots of calories and fewer nutrients has increased as an outcome of changing cultural patterns that focus on convenience and on-the-go eating. Due to accessibility, affordability, and convenience, people may eat less healthful food, which can lead to micronutrient deficiencies and an increase in obesity.

Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has widened health inequities in numerous nations, has made child malnutrition worse. More individuals are struggling with food security issues as a result of the pandemic’s disruption of the world’s food supply chains and economic shockwaves. Disruptions to the infrastructure at places like schools, food banks, or clinics where many people receive food assistance during the epidemic are another cause of lack of access to nutrient-rich meals. Similarly, throughout the pandemic, there was a decline in the capacity to recognize and address undernourishment, particularly in children, as these individuals were not routinely attending physical school or seeing medical specialists.

Despite the significant contribution of child malnutrition to child mortality and its impact on long-term health, malnutrition treatment and prevention have received insufficient attention in international and national public health planning and programming. In areas where highly nutritious foods are unavailable or where people lack the financial means to purchase such foods, behavior-change approaches to malnutrition that emphasize education about proper food choices, hand-washing, and breastfeeding are insufficient to address the problem.

In the coming years, the burden of malnutrition will be relentlessly addressed – the challenge is complex, the actions required must come from various sectors, and data and accountability mechanisms must absolutely inform what happens next. Malnutrition in children has far-reaching, far-reaching, and far-reaching consequences that society cannot afford to ignore.

Despite the fact that child malnutrition still affects the underprivileged sections of society, significant progress has been made in this area in recent years, owing to government initiatives and contributions from NGOs like Save the Children. With the slogan “No Child Born to Die,” Save the Children is battling infant and child mortality in India by tackling both malnourishment and diseases that kill young children.