A World Health Crisis- Malnutrition

State of healthcare today

Malnutrition is a universal issue that no country in the world can afford to overlook. Each year around 20 million babies are born underweight and are undernourished most of their lives.

The burden of malnutrition is unacceptably high.

Estimates from the National Family and Health Survey (2015–16) shows that in India, about 38% of the children under the age of five years are stunted (low height for age), 36% of the children are underweight (low weight for age), and 18% children are wasted (weight for height)

Globally, undernutrition is an underlying factor in more than half of child deaths from pneumonia and malaria, and more than 40% of measles deaths.

Realising the far-reaching problem of malnutrition, Logy.AI is now undertaking a special project to measure undernutrition in children and adolescents.

We at Logy.AI are now aiming to eradicate undernutrition. We believe every child is born special and deserves good supervision with nutrition to sustain a healthy and full- filling life.

Why children are more vulnerable to malnutrition?

• Children are at the highest risk of dying from starvation. They become undernourished faster than adults.
• Severely wasted children are 11 times more likely to die than those with a healthy weight.
• Undernourished children catch infections more easily and have a harder time recovering because their immune systems are impaired.
• Globally, undernutrition is an underlying factor in more than half of child deaths from pneumonia and malaria, and more than 40% of measles deaths.

Physical growth of children (under 5 years) is an accepted indicator of the nutritional well-being of the population they represent. Adults and older children can access proportionally larger reserves of energy than young children during periods of reduced macronutrient intake.

Measuring of undernutrition, timely treatment, and monitoring of these children have been the biggest challenges governments and organisations are facing today.

Lack of enough trained health care professionals has only affixed to the problems.

We at Logy.AI are creating an auto -ML platform to detect children (infants to adolescents) suffering from undernutrition. We are using image analytics to identify undernutrition and instantly connecting to a trained healthcare professional through a digital platform.

We are now in transit to developing a platform which can effectively measure height, weight, age and physical changes associated with Undernutrition.

The expected output of the initiative is:

1. Identification of children needing immediate medical attention.
2. Lowering the fatality rate by timely treatment and care.
3. Connecting and monitoring by trained health care professionals.

We at Logy.AI, are always willing to provide better and feasible healthcare to all and make this world a better place to live in.

References:

1. Unicef: 2018 global nutrition report reveals malnutrition unacceptably high and affects

2. WHOs famine response plan

3. Defining and measuring malnutrition

4. https://www.unhcr.org/45f6abc92.pdf