Global progress in combating child malnutrition masks problem spots
The percentage of children with serious malnutrition decreased around the world from 2000 to 2017, a new study finds. But the problem stayed flat or even worsened in some countries, including swaths of Nigeria, Congo, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Guatemala. And trouble spots remained in even relatively well-off countries such as China and Peru, researchers report January 8 in Nature. “There are areas that have been left behind,” says Damaris Kinyoki, a public health expert at the University of Washington in Seattle. The results were especially disappointing for middle-income countries, she says. “We expected them to have better progress.” Prolonged childhood malnutrition is associated with lifelong cognitive and physical impairments, or even death. It’s difficult to directly measure so researchers use a proxy measurement called childhood growth failure, defined as insufficient height and weight for children under age 5. Typically, growth failure rates are assessed at the state or national level, but that broad geographic scale can obscure more localized health disparities....