BEIJING (AFP) - Nearly one-third of the children in China's poverty-stricken areas are malnourished, far more than in urban areas, in an example of the country's growing income disparity.
The survey conducted by the Beijing-based Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety found that more than 29 percent of children under five years old in China's poorest regions were growing at a slower than normal rate, China Daily said.
In contrast, only about one percent of their counterparts in urban areas are plagued by malnutrition, according to the survey conducted among more than 200,000 residents, including about 23,400 children aged five and below, across the country.
"The problem often surfaces when mothers stop breastfeeding their babies," Han Junhua, a researcher with the institute, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.
It is unclear why the mothers stop breastfeeding their babies, but many women in rural areas have to perform hard labor or travel away from home to make a decent living.
In rural areas, parents often depend on cheap syrup, malt, orange juice and even carbonated soft drinks to feed their children, the researcher said.
"As a result, toddlers in underdeveloped regions are also generally shorter than kids in cities," Han said.
Newborns in rural areas also weigh less than those in the cities.
Too rich a diet, on the other hand, has increased the level of obesity in China's larger, wealthier cities where milk, formula milk powder, yogurt and many other types of food are available.
Severe obesity now affects some 16 percent to 20 percent of urban youngsters.
Average birth weight of some babies in urban areas topped 3.3 kilos (7.3 pounds), close to the level of developed countries, the study found.
Young people between three and 18 years old are on average three centimeters (1.2 inches) taller than a decade ago, it said.
However, the survey also found that 25 percent of children up to two years old in cities and 33 percent in rural areas suffer from anaemia, while 15 percent suffer Vitamin A deficiency.
The poorest parts of China are Guizhou and Yunnan provinces in the southwest as well as Qinghai province in the northwest.
Two and a half decades of economic reform has brought increasing wealth to China's coastal areas and large cities, but many people living in the country's economically backward western regions still struggle to have a proper diet and shelter, with health care and education being luxuries they cannot afford.
I got this off Yahoo News. Wow, the mean birth weight of Chinese papers in urbanised areas is 3.3kg?!?! I must have been a very malnourished infant then, according to those standards. My birth weight? 2.85kg. Of course it didn't help that from the moment I was born, I started losing weight, at least I lost weight in the 2 days I stay in the hospital, when I left, I was 2.78kg. Makes you wonder if they starve babies in that particular hospital heh.
I dug out my health booklet earlier on and had a flip through it. It's not the one issued by the MOH, but the one you get when you're born. Issued by the hospital.
Length at Birth: 49cm
Head Circumference : 34cm (My head's almost as wide as my length heh)
Time of Birth: 1118hrs (I always found the time very nice)
Did you know I was a very stubborn young kid? During the annual assessment when I was 2, during the checkup, I refused to build a tower of 6-7 cubes as well as refused to fold a piece of paper. Heh. That prompted the doctor to write "to play with blocks, review manipulation". Obviously I was being difficult because the next time round, instead of building a 6-7 cube tower, I built one with TEN cubes. Lol. And how some people know that I am HORRIBLE with colours? Yes, I am horrible with colours. I can't match colours, can't come up with nice colour combinations to the next I have to ask friends who have better eyes for colour to help me. Yes, now I know why! Because... I see the world in a limited number of colours! I'm not colour-blind, I'm just.... I don't know..colour adverse? When I was 3, during another checkup, under the "able to name colours", the doctor wrote" blue, orange, green, red only". You know the colours there all appear in the cartoon "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"? The only missing colour is purple! What other colours are a 3 year-old supposed to identify? Hmmm....
I did 6 out of 8 of the bio structured questions I'm supposed to do. I can't stand the rest, cause they're all from the notes!!! ARGH. Time to do something else later I reckon. I sorted out about a third of my "Received Files" folder in My Documents. And you know what?!?!?!?! YOU sent me 55 files and more (some of which I didn't shift) since November 2004. I was flabbergasted when I saw that. Though I do think that there are some which I accidentally deleted >.<.
Ok I'm getting a bit of a headache now.. sudden onset. So I reckon I'm gonna go lie down for a little while, then do the chem question I'm supposed to do before thinking what else I should do for the night heh. TTYL
