Malnutrition is not a simple
disease, which occurs in the condition when the body does not get the right amount of
nutrients to maintain healthy
tissues and organ functions.
Malnutrition generally refers both to
undernutrition and
overnutrition, but usually it is used to refer solely to a
deficiency of
nutrition.
Infants and young
children are the most vulnerable because of their high
nutritional requirements for
growth and development.
Growth is an important
indicator of
health and
nutritional status of a
child. Generally,
underweight, studding and wasting are used as the
indicators of
malnutrition. In fact, a gain in height is a better
indicator of the adequacy of a
diet than a gain in weight. Rates of
weight gain needs to accompany accelerated height gain to maintain normal body proportions (weight-for-height). Now therefore
WHO recommends using weight-for-height as the
indicator of
malnutrition of
epidemic intensity in
communities and of nutritional condition evaluation, including
treatment assessment. The assessment of
nutritional status is commonly summarized by the mnemonic "ABCD," which stands for anthropometric measurement (A), biochemical or
laboratory tests (B), clinical
indicators (C) and dietary assessment (D).
Children with
malnutrition are required to ingest more than 30 essential
nutrients including both functional, protective
nutrients (type I) and
growth nutrients (type II), in order to have a catch-up
growth in weight and height.