Saving children from malnutrition and hunger

Dr Bob Makanda Itaka, a Medical Officer at Taung District Hospital and a Family Medicine registrar at the University of the Witwatersrand is passionate about children and wants to protect those who are malnourished in rural areas through research. Malnutrition, if it does not cause suffering by itself, triggers serious health problems such as anaemia, pellagra, and iron deficiency with complications that can even lead to death. In South Africa, 15 percent of infants are born with a low birth weight due to malnutrition, while another report estimated in 2008 that out of 10 million children’s deaths, 5.6 million can be linked to malnutrition.