The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Thu, 10/15/2009 8:06 PM
Thirty percent of Indonesia’s children are underweight and have a lower-than-average height for their age, mostly because of early childhood malnutrition, an expert says.
Ahmad Syafiq, who chairs the center for nutrition studies at the University of Indonesia (UI) in Jakarta, said on Thursday that those numbers were too high.
“The cases of underweight children with a lower-than-average height for their age is not a matter of genetics, but primarily of malnutrition,” Syafiq said, as quoted by state news agency Antara, at a forum in Makassar, the capital of South Sulawesi.
He suggested that the government’s budget to address malnutrition facing children and women was too low.
A UI study reported that 50 percent of the women in the country suffered from anemia, which Syafiq said would put their fetus at risk during pregnancy and endanger them during delivery.
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