Many young children in developing countries also
suffer from a number of nutritional deficiencies. Often,
underweight and nutritional deficiencies cluster
in the same villages, families, and individuals. The older
literature in Latin America referred to the problem of
malnutrition in young children as the síndrome
pluricarencial or “multiple deficiency syndrome,” a very
apt designation. Although less than 1% of pre-school
children have clinical vitamin A deficiency, many more
have subclinical vitamin A deficiency. Using the cutoff
point for serum retinol of less than 0.7 µmol/L to
define subclinical vitamin A deficiency, many countries
are found where 30% or more of children are affected;
58% of pre-school children in Indonesia, according
to a 1991 survey, were affected with vitamin A
deficiency . Anaemia, defined as less than 11 g of
haemoglobin per deciliter, is estimated to occur in more
than a third of pre-school children in developing countries
. According to UNICEF, about a third of babies
born in 1990, or some 40 million infants, were
iodine deficient in utero or in early childhood, but now
this figure is much less because of the widespread use
of iodized salt . Other nutritional problems are also
common in young children and include folic acid and
zinc deficiencies.