YB BABY FILES: NEWBORN
48 | JULY & AUGUST 2019
GROWING UP in the townships, we
used to call them “aboshortie” – short
kid. But shortness is, in fact, a known
condition called stunting.
More and more research is revealing
that stunting, more often than not,
has almost everything to do with the
mother’s health at the time her child is
conceived and during the pregnancy.
Sadly, stunting negatively impacts
not only stature but also brain and
other physical development, and robs
children of reaching their full potential.
Shockingly, in South Africa, one
in four children under the age of five
years is stunted.
WHAT IT IS
According to Grow Great, a local
campaign that aims to achieve zero
stunting in South Africa by 2030,
stunting is a condition that arises from
prolonged under-nutrition.
It is defined as shortness in height for
a child’s age and can be diagnosed by
comparing the child’s measurements to
others on standardised growth charts
of the World Health Organization.
If the child’s height-for-age lies below
minus 2 standard deviation from the
median height-for-age of the reference
population, the child is stunted. This
indicates chronic malnutrition.
Once it has set in, stunting may run
from one generation to the next.
Grow Great aims to bring an end to
this cycle by supplying data to those
making policy and practical stories and
interventions to communities at risk.
Key to the organisation’s success
is intervention during the first 1 000
To learn more about Grow Great or get
involved, go to growgreat.co.zadays of a child’s life (roughly from
conception until the age of two), as
this is where there’s opportunity to
establish a foundation for children’s
academic success, health and general
wellbeing. During this period, children
are also most vulnerable to stunting.THE CAUSES
According to Grow Great and the
World Health Organization, inadequate
nutrition – not eating enough or eating
foods that lack growth-promoting
nutrients – is the best-known cause
of stunting. Recurrent illness during
pregnancy with everything from
malaria and HIV/Aids to intestinal
worms can also be a cause.
Chronic illness during pregnancy,
such as with hypertension, can also
cause poor nutrient intake, absorption
or utilisation.
Teen pregnancies are also a risk
factor, as the body of the still-growing
mom competes for nutrients with her
foetus. Closely spaced pregnancies are
also said to deplete a mother’s nutrient
reserves and could be a factor.THE IMPACTS
Some of the consequences of stunting
include poor cognition and educational
performance, lost productivity and,
when accompanied by excessive weight
gain later in childhood, an increased
risk of nutrition-related chronic
diseases in adult life.
On average, stunted children have
lower earning potential and are less
likely to finish school. They are more
likely to live in poverty as adultsand then have stunted children
themselves, as they become trapped
in intergenerational cycles of abject
poverty.
Sadly, stunting is largely irreversible,
says Dr Kopano Matlwa Mabaso,
executive director of Grow Great.
“A child can’t recover height in the
same way that they can regain weight.
Stunted children fall sick more often,
miss opportunities to learn, perform
less well in school, and grow up to
be economically disadvantaged, and
are more likely to suffer from chronic
diseases,” she explains.
Dr Matlwa Mabaso says a large body
of research now shows that stunting
robs young children of reaching their
full potential.
She says our stunting figures are “far
higher than would be expected of an
upper-middle-income country like ours.
And it is even higher than many other
poorer developing countries.”WHERE CHANGE STARTS
The Grow Great campaign, which is
steadly rolling out across the country,
has a many-pronged approach. It
targets four P’s: parents, practitioners,
the public and policymakers.
It also includes Flourish, a low-cost
mom-and-baby class franchise and
a resource hub for community health-
care workers.
Grow Great also uses stories to
inspire the public to support mothers
to breastfeed exclusively for the first
six months, or for as long as they are
able to. It also asks for community
involvement in ensuring that public
spaces have clean and private areas for
women to breastfeed.
Employers are urged to create
enabling environments in the workplace
for women to breastfeed or express and
protect their right to take two 30-minute
breastfeeding breaks daily, as is
stipulated in the Department of Labour’s
Code of Good Practice on Pregnancy,
which also covers the after-birth period.
Grow Great is also campaigning to
introduce eggs into the diets of infants
from as young as six months. YBThere is more to being very short than
just being disadvantaged in the height
department, writes Pearl RantsekengNot just
short