Malnutrition on the Rise in Rural Tajik Children
New York, Nov 5 2009
Young children in rural Tajikistan are increasingly likely to be malnourished because of a lack of food, poor water quality and high prices for many basic products, United Nations aid agencies said today, warning that the children are now at greater risk of contracting infectious diseases.
The UN Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (http://ochaonline.un.org/) reported that nutrition
levels of rural Tajik children “has been deteriorating
significantly,” with the percentage of children under the
age of five classified as underweight for their height
almost doubling to more than 10 per cent between January and
July this year.
The proportion of children of the same
age group considered to be severely malnourished rose from
1.9 per cent to 4.3 per cent in the same period.
OCHA
said poor water quality during the summer months –
following heavy floods and mudslides in the spring – in
Tajikistan has led to more frequent bouts of diarrhoea among
local children.
Food prices in the mountainous Central
Asian country have also been particularly high during and
immediately after the last winter, while there has been a
lack of available food as well.
OCHA warned that
infectious disease rates are likely to rise because of the
poor nutrition, and this could in turn lead to more prolonged
and severe cases of diarrhoea and of respiratory
illnesses.
Since September, to coincide with the start
of the school year, the UN World Food Programme (http://www.wfp.org/countries/tajikistan)
has been providing daily hot meals to 360,000 children
attending primary schools in rural Tajikistan.
The
agency also delivers food to an estimated 260,000 Tajiks
considered to be in hardship regions, and also to 15,000
tuberculosis patients and their families.
WFP provides
a series of other forms of assistance, including take-home
rations for schoolgirls, food-for-work projects and
nutritional supplements for malnourished children and their
mothers.
ENDS