Sanitation in India
Poor Sanitation in India May Afflict Well-Fed Children with Malnutrition, by Gardiner Harris, in Monday's New York Times, discusses something that has been puzzling health and sanitation experts for a while: why are so many children in India with improved food quality and quantity not thriving? Why are patterns of growth stunting so persistent? If this emerging hypothesis is correct, then it would seem the clue to the disturbingly high rates of stunting is sanitation, not food. The large percentage of the population in India who defecate in the open may be the cause; the theory is that the bacterial…