Stunted growth is a reduced growth rate in human development. It is a primary manifestation of malnutrition in early childhood, including malnutrition during fetal development brought on by the malnourished mother. According to the latest UN estimates, an estimated 165 million children under 5 years of age, or 26%, were stunted in 2011. More than 90% of the world's stunted children live in Africa and Asia, where 36% respectively 27% of children are affected. Once established, stunting and its effects typically become permanent. Stunted children may never regain the height lost as a result of stunting, and most children will never gain the corresponding body weight. It also leads to premature death later in life because vital organs never fully develop during childhood.
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Famous quotes containing the words stunted and/or growth:
“A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday know. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Cities force growth and make men talkative and entertaining, but they make them artificial. What possesses interest for us is the natural of each, his constitutional excellence. This is forever a surprise, engaging and lovely; we cannot be satiated with knowing it, and about it; and it is this which the conversation with Nature cherishes and guards.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)