Mental impact of malnutrition endangers children’s future – UN
July 13, 2006 (GENEVA) The mental harm caused by malnutrition is almost as damaging as the physical toll for millions of children in poor countries, retarding their mental development and putting their future on the line, the UN’s World Food Programme has warned.
Malnutrition-related illnesses claim 25,000 lives a day — more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined — and, among those who have never been hit, the idea of hunger generally evokes images of emaciated victims.
But the lingering impact on the minds of those who survive often goes unnoticed, the WFP said in a new report.
Hunger in childhood can cause irreversible mental stunting, lower intelligence quotients (IQs) and reduced learning abilities, said the WFP.
The effects are tragic for individuals and staggering for nations: according to estimates, the average IQs of the populations of more than 60 affected countries are 10-15 points lower than they could be, because of malnourishment.
The burden is a double one because hunger and learning are linked, said the WFP.
Even if they are able to go to school, undernourished children are often unable to concentrate on their lessons. But learning is an effective way of reducing an individual’s risk of going hungry, thanks to better skills.
Over 300 million children worldwide regularly go to bed hungry, approximately one-third of them youngsters who don’t go to school because their parents are too poor.
“A population of hungry, unskilled adults creates a generation of children too hungry to grow, learn or develop the capacity to fight hunger, and who then go on to have their own hungry children,” said Sheila Sisulu, deputy head of the WFP.
“As a result, they become not an asset for development but in fact a drain on efforts of countries to develop,” Sisulu told journalists.
“This can be reversed, but it requires not only resources — which are always an issue — it requires the political will to recognise that an investment in nutrition and education is an investment in development, both eocnomic and social.”
The WFP recommends that governments that can afford it — and donors to countries that can’t — shift their focus towards policies such as school feeding programmes, said Sisulu.
“Education and learning is about more than just buildings and books. It’s also about feeding the mind so that the mind can in fact take advantage,” she said.
Besides basic skills like reading, writing and arithmetic, education can impart openness to different ideas, such as new agricultural techniques or improved hygiene, and a greater capacity to understand and apply them, said the WFP.
The ultimate knock-on benefits can include improved lives and livelihoods, leading to resources to produce or buy food and better the lot of the next generation, it said.
(ST)