[/caption]MWF - GHN Feature-- “If donors and policymakers are serious about reducing child mortality rates, then providing child-appropriate foods must be made a standard component of any pediatric program in the world’s ‘malnutrition hotspots’,” is the summation statement of a world study on child nutrition, aimed at G8 countries in what needs should be focused on globally and how.
Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF, found child mortality rates to be 50 percent lower among a large group of young children in the west African nation of Niger in 2010, following that country's receipt of nutritious supplements. Their research findings have recently been shared in a press release about the needs of children and ways to reduce child mortality.
MSF tells us that this encouraging findings reinforce the need for international donors and policymakers to make high-quality foods a cornerstone of childhood health programs, especially in areas where malnutrition predominates, such as in Africa.
What researchers point out specifically is that malnutrition weakens the immune system, exposing a child to higher risk of death from other illnesses, such as malaria, respiratory infections, and diarrhea. Adding a quality supplemental food to an essential package of care—including vaccinationand effective treatment and prevention of primary ‘killer diseases’ of young children—will accelerate the fight against child mortality.
The MSF study reflects on how nations can cut child mortality rates, a mission discussed last year in Muskoka, Canada by G8 member states. The answer, accoding to MSF, is to include nutritional food supplements with medical supplies and other aid given to countries in need.
“Our preventive strategies focused on getting a nutritionally appropriate food to children during the most crucial time—the critical window of six months to two years of age—instead of waiting for them to start losing weight, and we observed child mortality rates to be lower by half,” said Dr. Isabelle Defourny, MSF program manager for Niger in providing evidence of how good nutrition can cut children's deaths.
dramatically.
At any given time, an estimated 195 million children are affected by malnutrition worldwide. It contributes to at least one-third of the eight million annual deaths of children less than five years of age. MSF and other organizations have been distributing supplies of nutritional products that are rich in milk, minerals and vitamins to approximately 150,000 children and found this program to be highly successful in reducing child mortality. The organization combines this with screening tests for mental and physical problems and focuses on tailoring foods to meet health care needs.
And it isn't just Africa and Asia and those countries known to have high rates of child mortality. In the United States food security problems have been growing annually as reported in a study in 2005 and problems of obesity that experts saw are caused by eating starchy foods, the mainstay of the poorer diets, has been growing as a consequence. Child obesity is reported by the Centers for Disease Control to have tripled in the United States in the past 30 years. Information about proper nutrition becomes, therefore, an international concern.
“Providing young children with high quality nutritious foods has long been one of the foundational principles of successful malnutrition and child mortality reduction programs in Europe, Latin America and the United States, along with immunization, for instance,” said Dr. Susan Shepherd, MSF child nutrition advisor. “It’s time to stop applying different standards for children living in malnutrition
hotspots. We can save children’s lives today if the appropriate resources are put
behind similar interventions to those we deployed last year in Niger.”
