Desnutrición en la primera infancia en el ecuador

Abstract

Malnutrition in early childhood limits people's abilities and is a serious health problem in disadvantaged populations, due to the level of basic services and poverty. The objective of this study is to analyze the problem of undernourishment in early childhood in Ecuador during the period 2017-2022. For this purpose, scientific articles in English and Spanish were searched, updated through different high-level platforms such as Scielo, PubMed, UNICEF, OMS, and Google Scholar. Twenty-eight bibliographic sources were included in relation to the units of analysis, such as diagnostic parameters, prevalence, and diseases associated with undernourishment in early childhood; thus, it is known that the integral attention of the undernourished child by specialized professionals and home care is a strategy for restoring the child's developmental level, i.e., weight and height. On this point, it was found that there is a high level of undernourishment prevalence in Ecuador, which is the second country with this problem, especially in the Ecuadorian Sierra, where the indigenous population is affected. The diagnostic parameters are based on anthropometric and biochemical indicators