The Effects Of Malnutrition In Haiti

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Haiti has been suffering from poverty and hunger ever since they separated from France. The biggest reason why the country is in so much poverty is because all the debt they owe. Over half residents there are making as little as $1 per day (Haiti: Nutrition Profile, 2014). The poverty results in them not being able to afford proper food to meet nutritional needs and it also reduces the number of people who are getting educated. Children and women are the worst off in the country when it comes to undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. Not only are they not receiving proper nutrition, but they also are lacking education. Haiti suffered from a devastating earthquake back in 2010, but despite the devastation the country has been …show more content…

There are also multiple deficiencies the children suffer from that have serious side-effects on their health. The effects of undernutrition doesn’t stop at wasting, being underweight, and stunting, but it can also increase the chances of the child being susceptible to disease and death (Basset, 2010). It can also affect their mental and physical development which in turn affects how well they do in school. Although Haiti has been making improvement on their undernutrition problem with children, they still have higher rates for being underweight and wasting. One in every ten children under the age of 10 in Haiti are wasted, one in every three are stunted and two in every ten are underweight according to a survey conducted by the fourth national Haiti Demographic and Health Survey (Ayoya et al., 2013). They also found that the stunting occurs more often in rural areas versus urban due to the rural area being higher in …show more content…

Before the earthquake happened, only about 40% of babies 0-6 months were strictly breastfed; others had some other partial diet (Basset, 2010). Nineteen percent of the deaths in children that were 5 years or younger could have been prevented if the mother had been properly educated with how to feed her child (Ayoya et al., 2013). Some mothers believed that the first milk was dirty, when in reality it’s extremely important for the baby to consume it. There were some cases where the baby was not able to get breast milk so instead they would provide formula in the tents and show how much the baby should be consuming. In Haiti, it is common for women to be anemic due to a deficiency of iron. Up to 30% of the women in Haiti are actually getting the proper amount of iron they need (Haiti: Nutrition Profile, 2014). That other 70% become anemic which can lead to complications for her baby if she is pregnant. In some of the baby tents, pregnant mothers would be provided iron and folate tablets to help prevent anemia and birth

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