The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Professor Samuel Kaba Akoriyea, has disclosed that Ghana continues to grapple with high levels of severe child malnutrition nearly a century after the condition known as Kwashiorkor was first identified in the country.
Prof Akoriyea described the situation as alarming and called for urgent and coordinated national efforts to prioritise child nutrition and health.
Kwashiorkor, which means 'the disease of the deposed baby when the next one is born' in the Ga language, is caused by a severe protein deficiency and commonly affects children at weaning. "It's been 92 years since Cecily Williams, a Jamaican pediatrician, working at the Princess Marie Louise Hospital in Accra, defined the term Kwashiorkor.
Yet, two-thirds of Ghanaian children are still malnourished, according to UNICEF," he stated.
