More to Malnutrition than what meets the eye

Life isn't fair, but in some underdeveloped countries you'd be surprised at how happy the people are with next to nothing. On my medical mission trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua I witnessed first hand how malnutrition can have a drastic effect on seemingly a quarter out of all the children despite access to food. It wasn't obvious but it became apparent that many of the children in the tropics have sufficient foods but they are mentally underdeveloped, ill-looking, and constantly fatigued. As we examined more and more children we found that many of them had distended stomachs and had worms in their fecal matter. It came to be that many of these children had lived their entire lives with gastrointestinal parasites and never sought out medical attention. I then realized that malnutrition extends further than just establishing global food security. As a result of living with GI parasites during their first years of life children are unknowingly robbed of essential nutrients for proper mental and physical development. Many of these children were permanently mentally disabled. I believe that tackling the bigger problem, establishing food security, is first and formost but in tropical regions where food may be readily accesible there must be efforts to cure the population of GI parasites that will, if not resolved, continue to paralyze children over the generations from malnutrition.