•             Nutritional status of children under age 5 is an important measure of children’s health. In general, stunting increases with the age of the child, rising from 13 percent among children age 6-8 months to 40 percent among children age 36-47 months before declining to 36 percent among children age 48-59 months.

Stunting is a big problem,1 out of 3 stunted children in Cambodia and 1 out of 3 stunted children under age 5 are stunted.

Children Stunted Due to Malnutrition Are Not Only Short For Their Ages But Their Bodies And Brains Can Incur Lasting Damage, Too.1

            Stunting is the impaired growth and development that children experience from poor nutrition, repeated infection, and inadequate psychosocial stimulation. Stunting in early life -- particularly from conception until the age of two - impaired growth has adverse functional consequences on the child.2

            The most direct causes of stunting are poor maternal nutrition, inadequate nutrition (not eating enough or eating foods that lack growth-promoting nutrients) and recurrent infections or chronic or diseases which cause poor nutrient intake, absorption or utilization.3

            Stunted children fall sick more often, miss opportunities to learn, perform less well in school and grow up to be economically disadvantaged, and more likely to suffer from chronic diseases.

Nutrition Intervention

            Catch up growth is very important for helping stunting children to resume optimum growth. All children under 5 years of age can have the same height base on adequate nutrition and less disease environment.4

Nutrition plays crucial role as much as 80% to help children to reach their optimum growth and only 20% is impacted by genetic.

            Effective Nutritional Intervention Promotes Adequate Intake, Good Absorption & Effective Utilization can help children faster recovery and catch up growth for stunted children. 

Complete and balance high caloric nutrition includes:

Note:

1. CDHS 2014

2. https://www.who.int/nutrition/healthygrowthproj_stunted_videos/en/

3. WHO stunting in nutshell

4. WHO Multicenter Growth Reference Study Group 200