More than 18 million women severely undernourished in developing countries: study

More than 18 million women in the developing countries, including India, Senegal and Sierra Leone, are severely undernourished, according to a study published Tuesday by the U.S. journal JAMA.

These women tend to be the poorest and least educated members of society and comprise a "left behind" population of adults with severe undernutrition whose needs have not been met by economic gains and progress, said the study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Canada-based St. Michael's Hospital.

"What surprised us was the number of women suffering from severe undernutrition despite the fact that the prevalence of being overweight or obese has risen in most of the countries we looked at," lead author Fahad Razak of the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto said in in a statement. "What was also striking was that there was no decline in the prevalence of severe adult undernutrition in the past two decades in the majority of countries." Razak is also a visiting scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.

Severe chronic adult undernutrition is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) less than 16 in the study.

Researchers analyzed data from more than 700,000 women aged 20 to 49 from 60 developing countries, who participated from 1993 through 2012 in the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, which has conducted surveys in more than 85 countries since 1984.

They found the highest prevalence of undernutrition was in India (6.2 percent), followed by Bangladesh (3.9 percent), Madagascar (3.4 percent), Timor Leste (2.9 percent), Senegal (2.5 percent), and Sierra Leone (2.2 percent).

Poor women with little education were much more likely to be undernourished than their wealthier, better educated counterparts and were also more likely to live in rural areas, they said.

The results also showed that, in a subset of 40 countries where repeated surveys were conducted, most countries did not have a decline in the prevalence of BMI lower than 16 during the study period.

"In light of the dominant scientific and public narrative of obesity -- which remains concentrated among the better-off in these countries -- it is sobering and troubling to find millions who basically have been forgotten," added S V Subramanian, professor of population health and geography at Harvard Chan School and senior author of the study. Endit