An astounding result of a study conducted in India proves that children born to short women were 70 percent more likely to die before age 5 than those born to taller women.
Over 50,000 children were studied in the course of this study. Analyzing the collected data, researchers found that those children whose mothers were shorter than 57 inches were 70 per cent more likely to have died by age 5 than those whose mothers were at least 63 inches tall.
According to the researchers, the correlation between the mother’s height and child deaths is hardly surprising. Shorter women are likely to less healthy than their taller counterparts. It is commonly believed that a women’s height are an indication of a woman’s overall health and nutrition from her childhood.
There is additional reason why low maternal height could cause such a high percent of child deaths. Women with a smaller uterus are also susceptible to more complications during gestation, the researchers said.
“What the study shows is the critical need to invest in children, and especially girls, as the payoff is not only for them as children and adults, but for their offspring as well,” said S.V. Subramanian of the Harvard School of Public Health. This research was conducted by Subramanian along with colleagues.
Subramanian’s path breaking report was published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association. The report claimed that more than 2 million children younger than 5 years old died in India in 2006. This alarming rate of child deaths is more than in any other country in the world. It accounts for about one in four childhood deaths worldwide, according to United Nations data.
The findings “suggest the presence of inter-generational transfer of poor health from mother to offspring,” said Subramanian.
For more information one can always refer to the source of the article.