Malnutrition is a Major Cause of Morbidity and Mortality for Children
The pediatric ward of our first world this is a disease that occupy the small print in books and also a marginal place in the minds of pediatricians. We are concerned over the health problem of childhood obesity, its origin in the forms of life and nutrition of children and its implications for health. But we can not forget that the opposite case, malnutrition is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for children of more than half the world. One of the most striking clinical and severe, that images of the media posted to geographic locations of permanent famine and social conflict, as some in Africa, have been delivered to almost indifferent gaze of the Western society, is Kwashiorkor .
Kwashiorkor, meaning “child removed”, ie the child has stopped breastfeeding. It is a clinical syndrome resulting from a severe deficiency of high biological value proteins with inadequate calorie intake. You can begin to be evident from weaning, sometimes even earlier if maternal undernutrition is extreme, up to five years of age. Early clinical data of malnutrition are lethargy, apathy and irritability. Once late in the process, there is an inadequate growth, lack of energy, loss of muscle tissue, edema is most evident in the limbs and abdomen, and increased susceptibility to infections, leading to a high mortality rate diseases that are usually benign in other children with adequate nutrition and measles. Dermatitis is common and often scaly skin pigmentation and appendages. The black children have a sparse hair, slightly elastic, with a red-striped color or gray (hipocromotriquia). This coloration is such that they also call “red children.”