A lack of sufficient nutrition in a baby’s first two years of life means that the baby’s brain does not develop normally. This interruption in development is permanent and results in varying degrees of learning and behavioral dysfunctions. In 2006, the malnutrition ward of Mirwais Hospital, Kandahar, admitted 172 children. As a result of the severity of the malnutrition in combination with the hospital’s lack of basic needs such as diagnosis and monitoring equipment, twenty-six of these children died.
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