Does your baby measure up?
Do you wonder how tall a baby will be when he/she grows up? Going by the numerous online height predictors, it would seem that many parents are curious about this.
Most of these predictors work by asking you to insert parents’ heights and the baby’s weight, age and sex and then this tool calculates an estimate of the adult height for your child.
I would imagine that this forms part of the inquisitive musings that entertain parents, family and friends. But what if this wasn’t just light and interesting dinner talk?
Stunting
Many of us think "of course our children will reach their genetic potential". Sadly, this is not the case for many people living in developing countries. If you are a mother living in Kenya, the answer to the question ‘does your child measure up’ is likely to be ‘no’.
According to the 2008/09 Kenya Health Demographic Survey, nearly half of all Kenyan babies born within the past 5 years are stunted.
Short and daft
Stunting, caused by under nutrition during first 2 years of the child’s life, is associated with low height, weight and cognitive development measurements. This loss in height and intelligence cannot be recovered in the future.
While reading the local dailies, I came across this eye grabbing headline: Kenyans to be short and daft in the future. Living in Kenya and working in development, I know that stunting is a big concern in Africa but this story really put it in perspective for me.
The next generation of Kenyans is set to be shorter, less intelligent and thus less productive!
How are we ever going to achieve our grand development plans if our future generation will not reach its physical and mental potential? The situation looks grim as Unicef estimates that Kenya stands to lose Ksh 80 billion between 2007-2015 due to stunting.
Exclusive breastfeeding
Stunting is directly linked to the failure to breastfeed. Many of us are aware of the ‘breast is best’ campaigns that are popular in the West but I’m not sure how many of us have thought of breast feeding as the life saving choice it can be in developing countries.
According to the Terry Wafwafwa, the head of nutrition at Kenya’s Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, more than half of the child deaths in Kenya have nutrition as a contributing factor and poor breastfeeding contributes to 10,000 infant deaths every year.
Luckily, breastfeeding is free, easy and has numerous health benefits for the baby and mother. The entire country stands to gain: As Terry Wafwafwa points out, “if every Kenyan child was exclusively breast fed for the first 6 months from now on, Kenya would save Ksh14 billion by the end of 2015”.
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