Global Problem of Partial Brain Damage Affects Over 25% of All Children

What kind of monstrous evil allows over one in four children in the world to become partially brain damaged?

Adults starving to death is rare in the world. Being malnourished makes you weaker physically and mentally. It becomes more likely that other problem kills you or impact your health or they leave you alive but with different levels of brain damage. Nutrition-related factors contribute to about 45% of deaths in children under-5 years of age. An estimated 6.3 million children under the age of 15 years died in 2017. 5.4 million of them were under the age of 5 and 2.5 million of those children died within the first month of life.

Accelerated progress will be needed in more than a quarter of all countries, to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target on under-five mortality by 2030. Meeting the target would reduce the number of under-5 deaths by 10 million between 2017 and 2030. Focused efforts are still needed in Sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia to prevent 4 out of 5 deaths.

Malnourished, Sick and Brain Damaged

Malnourished children, particularly those with severe acute malnutrition, have a higher risk of death from common childhood illness such as diarrhea, pneumonia, and malaria.

However, the problem of chronic malnutrition and sickness from pooping in the open causes partial brain damage and this affects one in four children. This damage is called stunting. Once established, stunting and its effects typically become permanent. This means a stunted child grows up to become a stunted adult.

More than 90% of the world’s stunted children live in Africa and Asia, where respectively 36% and 56% of children are affected.

The IQ scores of the severely stunted children at eight years of age were 11 points lower than those of the children who were not stunted. At age 11, those who had been most severely stunted at age 2 still scored lower on the intelligence test than children who had not been stunted, although the gap was narrower at about 5 IQ points. Children who were severely stunted also had significantly lower scores on language and math achievement tests.

Stunted children may never regain the height lost as a result of stunting, and most children will never gain the corresponding body weight. Living in an environment where many people defecate in the open due to lack of sanitation, is an important cause of stunted growth in children. This happens a lot in India and most of Africa.

As of 2012, there were an estimated 162 million children under 5 years of age who were stunted in 2012. There are 130 million births each year. There are 520 million children under the age of five in the world at any time. 162 million out of 520 million were stunted.

520 million children under five in the world
162 million are stunted with an average of 5-11 IQ points of brain damage
6.3 million died from disease and malnutrition under the age of 15. 900K were 5-15 years old and died.
5.4 million died from disease and malnutrition under the age of 5. 2.9 million were 2 months – 4.9 years old
2.5 million died from disease and malnutrition died in the first month.

Children Who Live But Are Weak and Still Become Adults

The problems to the individuals and to society do NOT go away after the people become 5 or older. The stunting tracking statistics focus on the critical first 1000 days, but the problems for nations and world persist.

Each year, 130 million become give and there are another 130 million who became 0 to 12 months old. About 40 million of the under-five become part of the 25% of the population who are older and stunted.

The stunting rates were higher a decade or two ago at 40-50% in India, South Asia and Africa. This means even more of the older population has this problem.

Can under the under the age of five stunting be reversed? The effects of early undernutrition aren’t always irreversible. Some children studies were able to recover from early stunting and develop normally. Results show that around 50% of children in Peru who were stunted in 2002, when they were around a year old, were not stunted in 2009. The same figure was around 45% for India.

Correcting the feeding problems and getting people to clean sanitation can improve health. It has to happen while the children are still growing so that brain growth can make up for early damage.

To prevent stunting, it is not just a matter of providing better nutrition but also access to clean water, improved sanitation (hygienic toilets) and hand washing at critical times (summarised as “WASH”). Toilets are needed to prevent tropical intestinal diseases.

Once most of the full development of the brain and body has been completed by about the age of 11, then the IQ loss at that point becomes permanent. The malnutrition and diseases did not kill them but over 25% carry damage that impacts their lives and even their children.

* There is a greater risk throughout their lives for more illnesses and premature death
* School and career performance is impacted
* Reduced cognitive capacity is permanent partial brain damage. The average of loss of 5 IQ points by age 11 will stay with you.
* Women who were physically impacted and have a smaller pelvis, have increased the risk of delivering a baby with a low birth weight
* Stunted growth can even be passed on to the next generation. This is called the “intergenerational cycle of malnutrition”.

US Military and the 83 Point IQ Level

Jordan Peterson described how the US military determined that people with an IQ below 83 (1 in 10 people in the USA) could not be trained for anything at any level of the organization that was not counter-productive.

* the military is highly motivated to bring as many people as possible into the organization
* the military has used 100 years of statistical analysis to determine that bringing in people with IQ below 83 is a net negative
* if the military is as cognitively complex as the rest of society, then this means US society has a problem determining what to do with 10% of the population.

The poor countries of the world are increasing the size of the population with IQ below 83 from 1 in 10 to 2 in 10 or even 3 in 10.

Corruption and True Evil – 60% of Subsidized Food Did Not Reach Poor People in India

In 2011–12, over 500 million Indians received 5 million tons of subsidized food. This is more than 10 times the amount of direct food aid delivered by the World Food Programme in 2011. In 2005, India estimated that nearly 60% of its subsidized grain did not reach poor people because of theft, corruption, and difficulties identifying the needy. This is now better but over 17% of Indians are still undernourished.

30 million tons of food was redirected to regular markets and sold at higher prices.

Nearly 2 million tons of grains were lost in India alone because of rot. They were improperly stored. They are just piled up in the open. They need to be put in granaries that reduce humidity.