Exposure to animal feces has been linked to slower physical growth in young children, according to a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
The study, published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, looked at the growth, health and hygiene conditions of 6,000 children aged from 6 to 24 months in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Vietnam.
In Bangladesh and Ethiopia, the presence of animal feces in the homestead was associated with significant slower physical growth, said a release of IFPRI, a Washington-based leading food policy think-tank.
Previous studies have shown that young children in poor countries will often sit in homestead gardens where they directly ingest animal feces or contaminated soils. Unsurprisingly, animal feces have extremely high concentrations of bacteria, leading to infections that decrease the ability of young bodies to absorb nutrients and use them for physical growth and development.
“Slow growth in the first few years of life casts a long shadow,” says Derek Headey, senior research fellow at IFPRI and an author of the report. “It's strongly associated with poor health and cognition as well as reduced educational attainment and subsequent lifetime earnings,” Headey added. In the three surveys analyzed in this report, just seven percent of children were exposed to human feces, while over forty percent were exposed to animal feces. One of the cruel ironies of this finding is that livestock are essential sources of some highly nutritious foods, such as eggs. IFPRI researchers are looking for solutions to this trade-off in Africa's Burkina Faso. “Almost all rural households in Burkina Faso own chickens. But their animals don't produce many eggs and they pretty much poo where they please. We're basically looking for ways to reverse that situation,” Headey said.
This report was first published in The Daily Star.