According to UNICEF’s executive director, Anthony Lake, since 2010, lack of clean water, vitamins and a better focus on breast feeding
to these kids would have helped prevent this sad fate of these
children. These children will in fact remain increasingly vulnerable to
various illnesses and may even face an early death, he said.

“Stunting is the least understood, least recognized and least acted
upon crisis. It is a hidden crisis for these children,” said Lake, as
has been reported by the AP.

These kids have been deprived from folic acid, iron and vitamin which
are so vital at the time of their development in the womb. “Stunted
doesn’t mean simply short,” Lake said. “The child’s brain never properly
develops. Irrevocably. That’s it. You can’t fix it later. You can fix
being underweight. You can’t fix being stunted after age 2.””What this means is, for the remainder of that child’s life, irrevocably the child
will learn less in school, will earn less later, is more vulnerable to
disease,” he said. “This is a tragic violation of that child’s life, but
it’s also a tremendous strain on that society.”

It was at a global conference in Dublin that Lake had unveiled the findings of his report along with slides of these children’s nerve development, weaker cells and stunted brains.

According to the findings in the U.N report, the highest number of
stunted children had come from twenty four countries spread over South
Asia and the sub Saharan Africa. In fact, more than a half of the
children in places like Madagascar, Niger, Burundi and Timor-Leste under
five years of age suffer a stunted growth.

The largest number of stunted children was from India with a total
population of over 61.7 million stunted children. This makes up for over
forty eight percent of all five year old kids in the country.

The civil war has also led to this problem growing in Syria with the
widespread disruption to family life, schools and healthcare. Prior to
the war, the percentage of stunted children across the country had come
up to over a twenty eight percent.
There
are in fact an endless number of different spots in the world in need
of attention, and various officials in the UNICEF have been in
collaboration with these governments and local aid agencies. The U.N has
been permitted to get education, vitamins and water distributed among
expectant mothers in Syria.

“I’ve never had any (country) push back,” he said. “There’s a natural
reluctance among all governments to say: ‘Yes we have a problem that we
could have fixed quicker.’ So you’re always going to get a little bit of
denial. But I’ve never heard of a country that said: ‘No, we’re not
going to deal with it,'” as reported by AP.

“People too often assume if you get enough food to eat, you’re getting
enough nutrition to head off malnutrition or stunting. The fact is you
can eat lots of food and not get enough nutrients.”
The fact that India which has been free from the shortage of food
possesses the highest number of stunted children shows that ensuring the
ideal growth for kids does not mean letting them eat a lot.

Breast feeding is
something that needs to be highly focused on, especially among mothers
in the Third World. The first six months are of especial importance.
Local dirty water has to be completely avoided since diarrhea is one of
the main factors responsible in creating stunted kids.

Dr. S. Akhtar Ehtisham