Armenian News-NEWS.am presents an extract of Nanore Barsoumian’s article published in The Armenian Weekly.

World Health Organization (WHO) claims that 171 million children under the age of 5 are stunted in the world. In Armenia, stunting affects roughly one in five children, according to the 2010 Armenian Health and Demographic Survey (ADHS), which was released this April.

“Children in Armenia are not receiving proper nutrition as a result of poverty, food prices, competition for household resources caused by globalization, and greater access to over-processed foods via supermarket expansion,” a visiting professor at the American University of Armenia (AUA) Hekimian said.

Armenian Ministry of Healthcare recommends that children up to six months old should be exclusively breastfed, because breast milk provides all the nutrients needed by the infant, and limits exposure to illness. However, the ADHS report shows that only 35 percent of children under 6 months are exclusively breastfed. Four percent of children under five years old are wasted, while five percent of children in Armenia are underweight.