The report highlights the silent and too often invisible emergency of malnutrition, and emphasizes the importance of micronutrients in preventing child death and debilitation.
Prevention is simple and cheap.
Two cents' worth of vitamin A can reduce child death rates in affected areas by 25 percent. Iodine deficiency, the number-one cause of preventable mental retardation worldwide, can be averted by salt iodization costing 5 cents per person per year. Millions of its survivors are left crippled, vulnerable to illness, and intellectually disabled. A child who eats enough to satisfy immediate hunger can still be malnourished. While there have been dramatic gains in reducing child malnutrition in parts of the world, notably Latin America and East Asia, the overall number of malnourished children has increased.