Effects Of Malnourishment And Mortality

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Malnourishment and Mortality: Daily, all around the world, hunger and malnutrition take more lives of humans than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Starvation is a worldwide issue that has detrimental effects on people’s physical and social well being. The deprivation of food and nutrients can cause many negative effects on the human body especially for growing children. Negative effects can include being more vulnerable to diseases, a stunted physical and mental growth and higher child mortality rates. In both growing children and adults, immune systems are more deficient when having an illness from malnourishment. “Worldwide, malnutrition and specific nutrient deficiencies are the leading underlying cause of immune deficiency, leading …show more content…
The immune system is not fully effective when not nourished and therefore makes catching diseases easier than if you were fully nourished and your immune system was in full effect. “Malnutrition, deficient in micronutrients and micronutrient imbalances can disrupt the function of various immune system components. This weakens the immune defence, decreasing its effectiveness in the eliminations of pathogens and making us vulnerable to various diseases” (Seri). Malnourishment not only lets people become sicker faster but it also makes it harder for the body to fight the sickness because of the weakened immune system. Whereas someone fully nourished would not be affected by the illness as harshly due to the advance of nutrients and having the immune system in full effect. “In addition, the illness itself is always accompanied by the loss of many nutrients in the body, which further aggravates already existing nutrient …show more content…
“Malnutrition often contributes to extraordinarily high mortality rates” (The use of...). For a malnourished mother to deliver a malnourished child often leads to death of the child and occasional mother because they can not survive without the nutrients the body needs. In parts of the world where this occurs it leads to a vicious cycle of malnourishment and mortality that is nearly impossible to escape. “Nearly 3 million babies die every year in their first month of life and a similar number are stillborn.(due to undernourishment)”(Children: Reducing Mortality). Babies do not have the ability to survive without the nutrients and ultimately succumb to the malnourishment. Increasing the child mortality rates dramatically due to negative intake of food and the nutrient it needs. “It suggested that malnutrition is an associated cause in about half of all deaths occurring among children in developing countries” (Rice). In developing countries around the world one out of two of all child deaths are due to lack of food and proper nutrients. Malnourished children can not live without food and nutrient intake that the body needs and they are only to fight malnourishment for so long before it completely kills

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