Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Nutrition and Global Health
Nutrition and Global Health
Nutrition and Global Health
and
Global Health
Micheline Beaudry,
Ph.D.
Université Laval
Learning Objectives
At the end of this lecture you will
• Be aware of the key role played by
undernutrition in the lives of people &
societies around the world
• Realize that food, though essential, is not
equivalent to nutrition
• Know that there are affordable solutions
& wish to find out more about them
At the end of this lecture you will
be able to (performance objectives)
• List the 4 major nutrition problems in the
world, their major manifestations,
consequences & global distribution
• List the major causes of these problems and
solutions proposed
• Convince a friend of the opportunities
provided to improve people’s lives
The major nutrition
problems in the world are:
• Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM)
• Iron deficiency
• Vitamin A deficiency or
hypovitaminosis A (VAD)
• Iodine deficiency disorders (IDD)
• Nutrition-related chronic diseases
Protein-energy malnutrition
(PEM)
• Stunting
– insufficient height gain relative to age;
– implies long-term malnutrition and poor health
• Wasting
– insufficient weight gain relative to height/losing weight
– implies recent/acute malnutrition
• Underweight
– insufficient weight gain relative to age or losing weight
– implies various combinations of stunting and wasting
Proportion (%) of underweight
60
children by region, 1985-1995
50
40 South Asia
SubSaharan Africa
30
Sout-East Asia
20
N.Africa&M.East
10 Lat.Amer.&Caribb
.
0
1985 1990 1995
PEM and young child mortality
• Malnutrition potentiates the effect of
disease on child mortality
• The effect is for both mild-to-moderate as
well as severe malnutrition; it is not only
due to confounding by socioeconomic
factors or intercurrent illness
• The effect of malnutrition and infection on
child mortality is multiplicative rather than
additive as was implicitly assumed
Other consequences of PEM
• Impaired cognitive & behavioral
development
• Low educability
• Reduced productivity & income
• Poor reproductive health
Causes of malnutrition
Manifestations Growth, survival and
development
Immediate Diet intake Disease
Causes
Underlying Access to CARE practices HEALTH
Causes FOOD for mothers&ch serv & environ.
EDUCATION
Ressources & Control
Human, Economic &
Basic Organizational
Causes
Political, Ideological
&Economic structure
To ensure adequate growth &
nutrition, it is necessary to facilitate
• The ability of households to provide CARE
for mothers & young children (e.g. breast-
feeding, complementary feeding, love...)
• Access by households to sufficient FOOD
to lead an active & healthy life
• Access to adequate HEALTH services (e.g.
immunization) & a healthy environment
(e.g. clean water)
Iron deficiency
• Over 2 billion people suffer from some form
of iron deficiency
• Not all causes of anaemia are nutritional in
origin; yet anaemia linked to iron and/or
folic acid deficiency is among the world’s
major nutritional disorders
• Africa & South Asia have the highest overall
incidence of anaemia, followed by Latin
America & East Asia
Consequences of iron deficiency
• Reduces work capacity, thus productivity,
earnings & ability to care for children
• Associated with 50% of maternal deaths &
wholly blamed for up to 20%
• Retards fetal growth, causes low birth
weight (LBW) & increases infant mortality
• Impairs ability to resist disease; in
childhood, reduces learning
Improving Iron status