How is malnutrition measured?
In many emergencies, children under 5 are the most vulnerable to food shortage and manifest the effects of food shortages earlier than others. For this reason, weight and height are measured to determine the overall nutritional status of a population. • Children whose weight to height ratio falls below certain standard cut-off points are considered acutely malnourished. • The prevalence of acute malnutrition is the proportion of all children measured to be malnourished. It is the main measure of severity in a population. Although young children generally are the first to show signs of malnourishment, this is not always the case. For example, in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union, elderly pensioners whose fixed incomes were substantially devalued as a result of inflation often suffered these effects first.
