RESUMEN
Insufficient growth during childhood is associated with poor health outcomes and an increased risk of death. Between 2000 and 2015, nearly all African countries demonstrated improvements for children under 5 years old for stunting, wasting, and underweight, the core components of child growth failure. Here we show that striking subnational heterogeneity in levels and trends of child growth remains. If current rates of progress are sustained, many areas of Africa will meet the World Health Organization Global Targets 2025 to improve maternal, infant and young child nutrition, but high levels of growth failure will persist across the Sahel. At these rates, much, if not all of the continent will fail to meet the Sustainable Development Goal target-to end malnutrition by 2030. Geospatial estimates of child growth failure provide a baseline for measuring progress as well as a precision public health platform to target interventions to those populations with the greatest need, in order to reduce health disparities and accelerate progress.
Asunto(s)
Desarrollo Infantil , Trastornos del Crecimiento/epidemiología , Crecimiento , Desnutrición/epidemiología , Síndrome Debilitante/epidemiología , África/epidemiología , Preescolar , Femenino , Objetivos , Trastornos del Crecimiento/prevención & control , Humanos , Lactante , Recién Nacido , Masculino , Desnutrición/prevención & control , Prevalencia , Salud Pública/estadística & datos numéricos , Delgadez/epidemiología , Delgadez/prevención & control , Síndrome Debilitante/prevención & control , Organización Mundial de la SaludRESUMEN
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
RESUMEN
Exclusive breastfeeding (EBF)-giving infants only breast-milk (and medications, oral rehydration salts and vitamins as needed) with no additional food or drink for their first six months of life-is one of the most effective strategies for preventing child mortality1-4. Despite these advantages, only 37% of infants under 6 months of age in Africa were exclusively breastfed in 20175, and the practice of EBF varies by population. Here, we present a fine-scale geospatial analysis of EBF prevalence and trends in 49 African countries from 2000-2017, providing policy-relevant administrative- and national-level estimates. Previous national-level analyses found that most countries will not meet the World Health Organization's Global Nutrition Target of 50% EBF prevalence by 20256. Our analyses show that even fewer will achieve this ambition in all subnational areas. Our estimates provide the ability to visualize subnational EBF variability and identify populations in need of additional breastfeeding support.