179 children died from acute malnutrition in rural KZN - study
Umkhanyakude District is home to some of the worst child malnutrition figures in all of KwaZulu-Natal's rural districts, according to an investigation by health journalism agency Spotlight.
It found that in 2018 alone, children from more than half a million homes in Jozini went to bed hungry. This led to cases of severe acute malnutrition.
More than 2 200 children suffered from extreme malnutrition in 2018/2019 - 179 of them died.
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Spotlight's Kathryn Cleary says poverty, child-headed homes and unemployment are the main contributors to poor diets.
"That's really shocking because it hints to socio-economic issues, it hints to a lack of care and so the children that need support the nutrition-related issues early on in life."
"We know from the KZN Department of Health that two spurts of severe acute malnutrition-related deaths acute in the first year of life. So you're looking at infants that are suffering from the most extreme form of malnutrition and are not going to survive."
