Severe malnutrition in areas of the Pacific

Transcript

A child health expert says widespread poverty is leading to malnutrition, stunted growth, and childhood deaths in the Pacific region.

New Zealand paediatrician Dr Teuila Percival told Jenny Meyer severe malnutrition is a marker of things not being right in the region and some countries have seen an increase in the problem.

TEUILA PERCIVAL: In Samoa for example there was a Ministry of Health release maybe a couple of months ago saying they'd had 72 admissions with acute, severe malnutrition last year. And that is certainly up from previous years where it's been like 40 to 50. Samoa is one of the better countries at recording and keeping health information and they have certainly seen a slight increase.

JENNY MEYER: And we're hearing reports that up to a third of children in Solomon Islands have stunted growth. That's a a pretty desperate statistic, one in three children?

TP: Yes and underneath stunting you see children who are stunted have survived long enough to actually grow and be measured. But underneath that you'll have a number of children who die in hospital in the first year of life with malnutrition and diahorrea. It's not surprising where's there's widespread poverty and where women and children are less important in the scheme of things.

JM: We've heard reports also of in Papua New Guinea, one in thirteen children dying before the age of five, I guess malnutrition must make children more vulnerable any passing illness or disaster for example?

TP: Absolutely and that's one of the, you get into a vicious cycle of a child with poor nutrition getting repeatedly unwell with diarrhea and pneumonia which makes them feed poorly again and get even more malnourished. So you do get into this viscious cycle of malnutrition and repeated illness.

JM: Do you think its an intergenerational problem where mother's themselves have quite poor nutrition during their pregnancy and have under weight babies for example?

TP: There's some evidence in some countries of poor nourishment in mothers, particularly anaemia, so there is certainly a degree of that, yeah.

JM: And in terms of child health experts such as yourself, paediatricians, what degree of sway would you like to have in moving things on, waking people up to this as being an issue and a problem for the region?

TP: It's a marker of something not right in the region. If we've got children with severe malnutrition it tells us a number of things. It tells us about our health system, and how it's meeting the needs of populations particularly children and women; it tells us about the environment in terms of poverty and access to resources to be able to bring children up successfully. So it's a huge issue not just for health but for countries as a whole.

Dr Teuila Percival says risks factors for child malnutrition include lack of breast feeding, poor family planning, and poverty.