Abstract
The World Health Organization defines nutrition as ‘a process whereby living organisms utilize food for maintenance of life, growth and normal function of organs and tissues and the production of energy.’ Malnutrition results when this process goes wrong, whether because of problems on the intake side or because of problems in processing the intake. There are various types of malnutrition including protein-energy malnutrition and specific micro-nutrient deficiencies. According to the World Health Organization the most important nutrition deficiency diseases are protein-energy malnutrition, which is important because of its high mortality rate, its wide prevalence, and the irreversible physical and sometimes mental damage it may cause; xerophthalmia, which is important because of its contribution to the mortality of malnourished children, its wide prevalence, and the permanent blindness it causes; nutritional anemias, which are important because of their wide distribution, their contribution to mortality from many other conditions, and their effects on working capacity; and endemic goiter, because of its wide distribution.1 Xerophthalmia results primarily from vitamin A deficiency, anemia from iron deficiency, and goiter from iodine deficiency.
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Notes and References
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D. S. McLaren, ‘The Great Protein Fiasco,’ Lancet, Vol. 2 (1974), pp. 93–6.
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Sen and his colleagues have provided an overview of ways in which social service programs can be structured, but did not argue that the needy should have rights to some services under some conditions. See Ehtisham Ahmad, Jean Drèze, John Hills, and Amartya Sen, eds., Social Security in Developing Countries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
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Also see World Bank, World Development Report1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 77.
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The linkage between mild and moderate (rather than severe) malnutrition and children’s mortality is explored in Reynaldo Martorell and Teresa J. Ho, ‘Malnutrition, Morbidity, and Mortality,’ in W. Henry Mosley and Lincoln C. Chen, eds, Child Survival: Strategies for Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 49–68.
In UNICEFs The Progress of Nations 1994 (New York: UNICEF, 1994), Urban Jonsson says ‘about 55% of the 13 million under-five deaths in the world each year are the deaths of children who were malnourished. And of those 7 million nutrition-related deaths, some 80 % are the deaths of children who were only mildly or moderately malnourished (p. 7).’ He carefully speaks of nutrition-related deaths, and stops short of suggesting they were entirely due to malnutrition. In October 1994 the Journal of Nutrition published a special supplement on ‘The Relationship between Anthropometry and Mortality in Developing Countries.’
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Also see Michael C. Latham, ‘Growth Monitoring and Promotion’ and other articles in John H. Hirnes, ed., Anthropometric Assessment of Nutritional Status (New York: Wiley-Liss, 1991),
and J. Cervinkas, N. M. Gerein, and Sabu George, Growth Promotion and Development: Proceedings of a Colloquium held in Nyeri, Kenya, 12–13 May 1992 (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 1993). There are computer programs that can be used to help analyze the data. EPINUT is an analytical program for nutritional anthropometry that is included in Epilnfo, a multipurpose computer system for dealing with epidemiological statistics. Version 6 was released in mid-1994 by USD, Incorporated, 2075-A West Park Place, Stone Mountain, Georgia 30087 (fax:404 469–0681).
Michael C. Latham, ‘Protein-Energy Malnutrition-Its Epidemiology and Control,’ JEPTO (Journal of Environmental Pathology, Toxicology, and Oncology), Vol. 10, No. 4–5 (July-October 1990), pp. 168–80.
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J. Larry Brown, ‘Hunger in the U.S.’ Scientific American, Vol. 256, No. 2 (February 1987), pp. 36–41;
J. Larry Brown and H. F. Pizer, Living Hungry in America (New York: Macmillan Library, 1987). Contrary views are presented in several articles in Insight, Vol. 4, No. 26 (June 27, 1988), pp. 8–15.
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© 1995 George Kent
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Kent, G. (1995). Malnutrition. In: Children in the International Political Economy. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375536_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375536_7
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