The prevalence of stunting (height or age below 2 SD) and thinness (BMI for age below 2 SD) were globally estimated using data from the Global School-Based Student Health and Health Behavior in School-Aged Children surveys conducted in 57 low- and middle-income countries between 20, involving 129 276 adolescents aged 12–15 years. These two forms of malnutrition, however, are closely related and often occur together in the same populations and often in the same children, and there is evidence suggesting that they share many causal factors. Wasting and stunting are often presented as two separate forms of malnutrition requiring different interventions for prevention and/or treatment. UNICEF Categories of undernutrition in children. Underweight, or low weight for age, includes children under 5 with low weight for height (wasting) and low height for age (stunting) and considered a proxy indicator for undernutrition if data on wasting is not available ( 2, 3) ( Figure 1). While wasting is the result of acute significant food shortage and/or disease, stunting represents chronic malnutrition, and the effects are largely irreversible. Wasting is defined as the tendency to be too thin for one’s height, sometimes called weight-for-height. Similarly, children are considered severely stunted if their length/height is below −3 SDs from the WHO child growth standards median for the same age and sex.

Stunting is defined as the percentage of children whose height-for-age is below minus two standard deviations for moderate and minus three standard deviations for severe stunting from the median of the 2006 WHO Child Growth Standards ( 1). Stunting is a process that can affect the development of a child from the early stages of conception until the third or fourth year of life, when the nutrition of the mother and the child are essential determinants of growth.

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