COMMENT | Why vaccination is important in malnourished children
COMMENT | Imagine how health would be affected in economic devastation in a world already reeling from a massive health pandemic.
Tumbling purchasing power would leave many families and nations hungry. Inadequate or improper diets would push many more to the brinks of malnutrition, at present an urgent global problem.
For a child, life’s precious first 1,000 days, is crucial for lifelong health and a time to capitalise on, for growth and cognitive potential.
Instead with scarce nutrition at this time, it may set fundamentals for long term diseases. For a woman, malnutrition can affect her unborn child and even unfairly impact generations to come...
COMMENT | Imagine how health would be affected in economic devastation in a world already reeling from a massive health pandemic.
Tumbling purchasing power would leave many families and nations hungry. Inadequate or improper diets would push many more to the brinks of malnutrition, at present an urgent global problem.
For a child, life’s precious first 1,000 days, is crucial for lifelong health and a time to capitalise on, for growth and cognitive potential.
Instead with scarce nutrition at this time, it may set fundamentals for long term diseases. For a woman, malnutrition can affect her unborn child and even unfairly impact generations to come.
What exactly is malnutrition?
Do we realise that malnutrition includes not only a state of deficiencies but also states of excesses or imbalances?
Being underweight, that is being wasted, stunted or both, being overweight, obese or having too much or too little vitamins and minerals are all types of malnutrition.
Nutrition and immunity
The importance of nutrition is such that it influences a network linking our immunity, metabolism and our hormones.
A malnourished child has to cope with an initially increased metabolism. So the focus of food energy is to survive. There is very little extra energy to fight infections. After all immune cells are like any other cells in the body and need the energy to function.
When a malnourished person has to fight infections the body doesn’t do it quite right, because there seems to be a lot of unnecessary inflammatory processes.
So the malnourished person is really in a state of immune deficiency, and this is only the tip of the iceberg, because nutrition functions in so many ways.
When protein, an extremely important nutrient in a diet is reduced, frequent infections occur because immune cells contain proteins. Malnourished individuals also suffer because intestinal barriers, which keep infections within the gut, do not function properly. So there is not only the risk of frequent infections but also the risk of dangerous spread of infections.
It’s important that micronutrients are balanced in the diet. Iron deficiency increases the risk of infections yet too much of it can predispose to infections, hence, popping in iron tablets without medical advice is dangerous.
Vitamin A and iodine deficiencies may be more subtle in the early stages but also increase infection risks.
Obesity, at the other end of the malnutrition spectrum, in H1N1 and in Covid-19 pandemics, is also a risk factor for both diseases.
We aren’t always aware that we have nutritional deficiencies
We may not realise that the face of malnutrition is so varied today that many may actually be suffering from one deficiency or the other, without knowing it.
Since nutrition is so important to fight infections, how we respond to infections would really depend on our holistic nutrition. For example, in this pandemic, although we know of some of its risks, yet we are aware that some without any such risks have succumbed to Covid-19.
Hence taking a balanced diet and immunising against diseases with available vaccines and keeping up-to-date on newly approved vaccines are necessary.
Vaccinations in malnutrition
Since malnutrition causes so many problems, one may wonder if undernourished children can respond well to vaccines.
Well, the best strategy is to do both - improve their nutrition and to vaccinate them.
Fortunately, even undernourished children can respond well to vaccination although some differences in their vaccine responses may depend on how undernourished they are.
These children are important target groups for vaccination because of their risks of severe infections. Infections can tip the balance of nutrition in any child, but vaccinations work by protecting from them.
Studies indicate that even when children suffer stunting and wasting, vaccines can normalise growth in a number of them.
Vaccinations allow the undernourished child to use precious calories for growth and development of body and brain instead of simply wasting it on fighting infections.
Additionally, let's not overlook the fact that by vaccinating them, the numbers of vaccinated individuals in a population increase, and that's important for herd immunity.
DR PRAMEELA KANNAN KUTTY is a professor of paediatrics, Universiti Pertahanan Nasional, Malaysia
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
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