Rainfall and drought linked to growth results in children in Uganda

Rainfall and long-term water availability in a region before a woman becomes pregnant and during pregnancy, future growth results of children in Uganda, according to new research led by a team of the Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and the Penn State College of Medicine.

Women who lived in an area that did not receive enough rainfall or experienced drought were more likely to give birth to children who do not grow with the expected speed for their age between birth and age 5. Children who are malnotic and in their growth are more sensitive to infections and can experience cognitive, physical and metabolic developmental disorders.

These environmental factors, such as rainfall, influence the availability of food, said the researchers, who in turn can influence the food status of a woman before and during pregnancy. If a mother is not eating or malnourished enough, the effect can be passed on to her child-the child can be born with a low birth weight or stagger experienced growth.

The findings, published in the diary Jama Network OpenCould help to inform the design of precision -Volkskse Health programs to improve the nutrition of women and to improve the nutritional results of children at birth and later in life.

“This is the first paper to tease the weather dynamics in the longer term and how they can influence the status of the food status of children,” said Paddy Sentongo, Fellow of Infectious Disease, Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and main author of the study. “If a child is born within a specific period, in a specific environment and under specific circumstances, we can predict whether or not they would be malnourished.”

Children who falter in their growth – those who have experience with hindering, where their height is considerably below average for their age, or waste, where they were too thin for their height – often show signs on or shortly after birth. Stunting, the researchers explained, is a long -term response to a poor intake of diet or repeated disease while wasting can be an acute response to malnutrition.

Earlier research into risk factors for malnutrition has focused on the economic status and the availability of food, the researchers explained. However, few studies have been viewed why people in countries like Uganda, who have environments that are conducive to agriculture, experience malnutrition. Have environmental factors such as rainfall, drought, temperature and topography of the country – factors that support agricultural production – raised the risk of malnutrition in children?

The team wanted to understand the prevalence of malnutrition in children in Uganda and how environmental factors influenced the risk of malnutrition. SSentongo explained that Uganda served as a good representative for Africa, the Sahara and for countries with low and middle income. It also served as an example of areas in countries with a high income where food is not easily accessible.

With the help of the 2016 Ugandan Demographic and Health Survey, they analyzed data on weight and length or length, depending on the age of the child, for more than 5,200 children between birth and slightly less than 5 years old. The researchers assessed every child according to growth curves of the World Health Organization to determine how each child compared to the average for his age.

They discovered that more than 30% of the children had an overload, which translates into an estimated 2.2 million of the 7.2 million children under the age of 5. More than 12% of the children had underweight and had wasted almost 4%, indicating a failure to arrive or serious weight loss. The incidence of stunting was particularly high in the northeast and western regions of the country, where 40% of children were younger than 5 years old for their age.

The team then investigated the relationship between meteorological and environmental factors and malnutrition. With the help of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, they looked at factors such as rainfall, temperature and drought at village level, from 12 months before the birth of the child until they were born.

“With this data we could look at the long -term effect of the weather and the recording of drought, not alone or it was raining today,” Sentongo said.

The team mapped the children to their geographical location, up to a scale of 1 kilometer by 1 kilometer. They discovered that if a mother lived in a location with higher rainfall 11 months before birth – or up to two months before conception – her child had a lower risk of being malnourished. Conversely, if a mother lived at a location that experienced drought three months before birth, her child had a higher risk of malnutrition.

The researchers also noticed that they expected areas of higher poverty associated with poor growth results, but they did not find such a link.

“It is often assumed that the socio -economic status is a primary cause of malnutrition due to limited access to nutritious food, but our analysis suggests that other useful factors are playing,” Sentongo said.

Insight into how these environmental factors influence the food and growth results in children and the spatial distribution of these results can help inquire the design of more cost-effective and precise public health programs, the researchers explained. In addition to sending food aid to regions of a country with the highest burden of malnutrition, public health officials can also identify areas who struggle with the availability of water.

“We can prevent children from being malnourished from the first day or even before they are born,” Sentongo said. “We can make water available through irrigation or ‘smart seeds’ that can still grow in hard and water -poor environments. By doing this, even before the babies are born, we set up mothers for success, pregnancies for success and these babies will be born healthy.”