WASHINGTON - Malnutrition is the single biggest cause of retarded economic growth in developing nations and must be tackled aggressively if these nations harbor ambitions of accelerating their economies, a World Bank report has said.
"Poor nutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths worldwide - a proportion unmatched by any infectious diseases since the Black Death," said a statement issued by Jean-Louis Sarbib, the Bank's senior vice-president.
"It is intimately linked with poor health and environmental factors, and yet policymakers, politicians and economists often fail to recognize these connections." The statement added that 60 percent of children who fell a victim to malaria or diarrhea could have been saved with proper nourishment.
The report, titled "Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development," cited shocking figures in India, currently recognized as a booming economy, where more than 50 percent children are undernourished. Alarmingly, this was more than what was found in sub-Saharan Africa where a quarter of children fell a victim to diseases caused as a result of malnutrition.
The report said that undernourished children stood to lose out on 10 percent of lifetime earnings and were at increased risk of contacting diseases like HIV/AIDS. International aid agencies and political leaderships in these countries had failed to tackle this growing menace, the report said, adding that nutrition must be made a priority "at the center of development."
Mira Shekar, a senior nutritionist and epidemiologist at the World Bank, who has authored this report stressed that more often than not, it is difficult to tell if a child is malnourished, “Usually you cannot tell. You cannot tell that a child is malnourished unless the malnutrition is really very, very severe, in which case you can see it. Either in the form of severe blindness or you see it in severe stunting, where a 19 or 20 year old will look like a 10 year old. But most of the time you don't see it,” she said, adding that contrary to popular perception of Africa being the hub of malnutrition, it is countries like India, Bangladesh and Afghanistan that have the worst rates of this condition.
Shekar says that the problem can be tackled by following several simple guidelines like implementing programs that would educate mothers about the importance of breastfeeding, "Complimentary feed, adding small amounts of additional food from six months of age onward. Making sure mothers themselves during pregnancy get enough food, but also get enough rest and are free of infections,” would also help, she added.
