Each year around the globe, 45 million children under the age of five experience wasting, which is very low body weight relative to height as a result of muscle and fat loss. Of these, 13.6 million have severe wasting, which puts them at an 11-fold risk of dying from infectious diseases compared to children who are not wasted.
Nutritional edema (also known as kwashiorkor) is another manifestation of malnutrition that often goes unmeasured in surveys. But it is likely that worldwide, hundreds of thousands of children per year have edema.
Children with edema have swelling in their feet at minimum, but their legs, hands, arms and faces can also become swollen. Researchers are still questioning why some children develop edema versus wasting — or a combination of the two.
