The Burden of Diseases in the Developing World
Hunger and malnutrition remain among the most devastating problems facing the majority of the world’s poor and needy people, and continue to dominate the health of the world’s poorest nations.
Nearly 30% of humanities are currently suffering from one or more of the multiple forms of malnutrition.
The tragic consequences of malnutrition include death, disability, stunted mental and physical growth and as a result, retarded national socioeconomic development.
Some 60% of the 10.9 million deaths each year among children aged less than five years in the developing world are associated with malnutrition.
Iodine deficiency is the greatest single preventable cause of brain damage and mental retardation worldwide, and is estimated to affect more than 700 million people, most of them located in the less developed countries.
Over 2000 million people have iron deficiency anemia.
Vitamin A deficiency remains the single greatest preventable cause of needless childhood blindness and an increased risk of premature childhood mortality from infectious disease, with 250 million children under five years of age suffering from subclinical deficiency.
Intrauterine growth retardation, defined as birth weight below the 10th percentile of the birth weight for gestational age reference curve, affects 23.8% or approximately 30 million newborn babies per year, profoundly influencing growth, survival, and physical and mental capacity in childhood.
It also has major public health implications in view of the increased risk of developing diet related chronic disease later in life.
Given the rapidity with which traditional diets and lifestyles are changing in many developing countries, it is not surprising that food insecurity and undernutrition persist in the same countries where chronic disease are emerging as a major epidemic.
The epidemic of obesity with its attendant comorbidities – heart disease, hypertension, stroke and diabetes – is not a problem limited to industrialized countries.
Children are in a similar situation; a disturbing increase in the prevalence of overweight among this group has taken place over the past 20 years in developing countries as diverse as India, Mexico, Nigeria and Tunisia.
The increasing prevalence of obesity in developing countries also indicates that physical inactivity is an increasing problem in those countries well.
The Burden of Diseases in the Developing World
