CAIRO - Poverty and malnutrition have a serious effect on a child's growth and health; if he lives in terrible poverty and doesn't get enough to eat, he may become disabled, warn experts. Disability can be described as an impairment that interferes with a person's ability to form his daily activities, they say. Research into different types of disability was highlighted at a symposium on the nutritional status of children with special needs, held at the National Nutritional Institute, affiliated to the Ministry of Health in Cairo, last week. In a study on the nutritional status of visually handicapped children and adolescents in Egypt, Dr Emily T. Hanna of the Nutritional Institute said that visually handicapped children were among the most vulnerable of disabled children. “It is important to assess their nutritional environmental health status,” she said. “We evaluated the nutritional status of 239 male and 313 female children, who were visually disabled, chosen randomly from among visually handicapped schoolchildren in six Egyptian governorates. “The children were socially and medically assessed. This meant looking at their nutritional habits, their dietary intake and a biochemical analysis made by their families,” explained Dr Emily. They discovered that 70 per cent of the children were getting enough protein. They also discovered that children with mental disabilities do badly at school, often dropping out and then failing to get a job. Meanwhile, Dr Shawkia S. Abdel-Halim of the Nutritional Institute has been engaged in research on the nutritional status of mentally disabled children in Egypt. She said that, although mental disability was often genetic, nutrition also played a vital role. Her study showed that mentally disabled children suffer from a shortage of nutritional elements such as iron, zinc, copper, magnesium and vitamin A. “In order to avoid mental disability, mothers should ensure that their children get enough iron, zinc, magnesium and selenium in their diet, as they all play an important role in brain growth,” Dr Shawkia added. “Animal products and leaf vegetables, such as parsley, lettuce and watercress, are rich in zinc, while broccoli, cabbages and artichokes are rich in selenium.” During the seminar, one of the sessions dealt with the nutrition of autistic children, whose numbers are apparently on the increase, although this may only mean that incidences of autism are being detected earlier, according to Dr Gulsen Saleh of the Institute for Community Medicine. She said that 750,000 young people in the US have been diagnosed with some form of autism, explaining that this disease is due to genetics or metabolic errors. “A mother should suspect that her child might be autistic if he avoids other people, while psychological and nutritional rehabilitation can improve the status of autistic children,” said Dr Gulsen. Recent research shows that lack of iodine is probably one of the many reasons for autism. Many mothers with autistic children were lacking iodine, whether during pregnancy or lactation. Dr Gulsen's research into autistic children covered a number of governorates including New Valley, Gharbiya, Beheira, Qaliubiya and Beni Sueif. She found out that mothers, who suffered from a lack of iodine were more likely to have children with irreversible mental disability. “The problem is that poor people in these governorates eat rock salt because it's cheap, but it doesn't contain iodine, “ she explained. “ The research team realised that 51 per cent of autistic children and 29 per cent of their mothers were suffering from lack of iodine.” Dr Gulsen stressed that, according to the World Health Organisation, the normal person needs only 1g of salt daily, so as to avoid hypertension and a lack of iodine, which leads to mental disability. In another session, Dr Seham Kheiri of the National Research Centre, who studied the reasons for autism, said that it is due to genetic and environmental factors relating to vaccines, viral or fungal infections and functional disorders affecting the brain and the whole body. She said that autistic children always liked food rich in protein, while they had little immunity and often suffered from digestive problems. “All autistic children suffer from malnutrition. Mothers must ensure their children eat properly and, if they have fungal or viral infections, get them treated.”
