Iraqi Children Pay The Cost: Acute Malnutrition Nearly Doubled

[G_j]

this has probably been posted somewhere, but it deserves attention.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/112204C.shtml.

Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos

By Karl Vick
The Washington Post
Sunday 21 November 2004

Malnutrition nearly double what it was before invasion.
(far higher than rates in Uganda and Haiti)

Baghdad - Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government.

After the rate of acute malnutrition among children younger than 5 steadily declined to 4 percent two years ago, it shot up to 7.7 percent this year, according to a study conducted by Iraq's Health Ministry in cooperation with Norway's Institute for Applied International Studies and the U.N. Development Program. The new figure translates to roughly 400,000 Iraqi children suffering from "wasting," a condition characterized by chronic diarrhea and dangerous deficiencies of protein.

"These figures clearly indicate the downward trend," said Alexander Malyavin, a child health specialist with the UNICEF mission to Iraq.

The surveys suggest the silent human cost being paid across a country convulsed by instability and mismanagement. While attacks by insurgents have grown more violent and more frequent, deteriorating basic services take lives that many Iraqis said they had expected to improve under American stewardship.


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