Hunger in Brazil Producing ‘Pygmies’

Chronic malnutrition in northeastern Brazil is producing a generation of stunted people, similar to the undersize Pygmy tribes of Africa, scientists and doctors say.

The findings were based on research by pediatrician Meraldo Zisman, who has studied what he terms “nutritional dwarfism” in more than 30,000 babies born in the last 10 years in the northeast, one of the poorest parts of Brazil.

His study, “The Pygmy Northeast--A Generation Under Threat,” used birth weight and size to determine that the local population is markedly diminishing in stature.

“To reverse this trend and normalize the race, we will have to adequately feed two generations of mothers,” said Zisman, professor of medical sciences at Pernambuco State University.

$50 Monthly Wage

About 35 million of Brazil’s 140 million people are Nordestinos , or Northeasterners. More than half of them barely subsist on the minimum monthly wage, equal to about $50, in a region that has been devastated by drought.

The high infant mortality rate--150 deaths per 1,000 births--is attributed to poor medical facilities, bad sanitation and education, compounded by grossly inadequate nutrition.

A poor Nordestino ingests an average of 1,845 calories a day, far below the 3,000 recommended by the World Health Organization.

Doctors warned of the dangers of this diet some years ago.

20-Year Study

“The hunger in the northeast will result in the formation of a physically and intellectually deficient generation of retarded people,” the late Nelson Chaves, founder of the Pernambuco University Nutrition Institute, had said in an effort to alert the government.

Zisman has studied the phenomenon for more than 20 years.

In the 1960s, he explained, the “nutritional dwarfism” was restricted to a few rural areas but has gradually advanced in line with population movements, to the urban peripheries, including Recife, the area’s most developed center.

Examining more than 30,000 babies born in the city’s two maternity hospitals, Zisman established that babies born to undernourished mothers weighed--at an average of 6.9 pounds--less than those of middle- or upper-class families, at 7.09 pounds.

Key Indicator

Birth weight is one of the key indicators of future development used by the World Health Organization.

“By the 1990s, the babies born to these poor mothers will weigh a mere 2.9 kilograms (6.39 pounds)--the same birth weight that is recorded in babies of the Pygmy tribes of Africa,” Zisman said.

The Pygmy ethnic group found in equatorial Africa, Sumatra and parts of Melanesia reaches a maximum height of just under five feet.

Zisman said projections indicated that Brazil’s undersized generation would probably reach heights of five feet to 5-foot-3.

Blindness, Death

A constant substandard diet greatly slows individual growth, passing from generation to generation, he explained.

The lack of essential vitamins, minerals and proteins leads to such conditions as blindness, or even death.

Malnutrition in mothers leads to underdeveloped breasts, meaning inadequate milk supply, and a narrowing of the pelvis, restricting the cranial development of the fetus during the formation of its nervous system.

Zisman said that of the 21 million babies born in the world annually weighing less than 5.5 pounds, 20 million were in underdeveloped regions similar to the Brazilian northeast.

20 Years Behind

“The children of economically underprivileged countries all over the world are gradually diminishing in weight,” he said.

Health facilities in Brazil are 20 years behind the times, with more than half of the population denied access to the most modern facilities, because of the concentration of wealth in the richer Brazilian states to the south, Zisman said.

A global fall in average birth weights is worrying the World Health Organization, which has also seen them in segments of the population of developed countries such as the United States. The ideal weight for a newborn baby should be around 7.7 pounds, Zisman said.

Zisman is trying to win government support for an effective program to arrest the spread of chronic starvation that grips the northeast.

‘Mere Palliatives’

Current food-supplement programs are “mere palliatives,” the pediatrician said, adding that malnutrition is a major factor behind premature death in the region where the average life expectancy is 55 years.

“The threat of this dwarfism is a serious one, and the Brazilian authorities are not interested in discussing it adequately,” Zisman said.

Thousands of Nordestino youths are rejected annually for military service, which is compulsory. The Military Command in the northeast has refused comment.