Beyond Malnutrition: The Role of Sanitation in Stunted Growth. Env Health Perspect, Nov 2014
Author: Charles W. Schmidt
An excerpt from the article: Beyond Nutrition – Nutritionists have tried dozens of approaches to prevent stunting, such as micronutrient supplements for pregnant women and children (especially growth promoters including iron, zinc, calcium, and folate); increased availability of fat-fortified commercial products such Nutributter and Plumpy’nut; a concerted push to encourage breastfeeding during the first six months of life; and efforts to improve the nutritional quality of the complementary foods babies eat while weaning.6
But Jean Humphrey, a professor of human nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says none of these interventions has been able to eliminate stunting completely. At best, she says, they improve growth by about a third of the typical height deficit in stunted Asian and African children. “This tells us that dietary improvements are important but not sufficient,” she says. “If we really want to eliminate stunting, we need to do more.”
Meanwhile, mounting evidence has shown that poor hygiene and sanitation also constrain linear growth in children. One study found that Bangladeshi children who had access to clean drinking water, improved toilets, and facilities for handwashing with soap, for instance, had a roughly 50% improvement in HAZ scores compared with control children who didn’t.18 Similar results emerged from studies in Sudan19 and Mexico,20 yet it was unclear exactly why poor WASH would contribute to stunting and WASH improvements would help to ameliorate it.
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