Cambodia: New snack aims to prevent child malnutrition

Nine-month-old Thorn is clinically malnourished, but in desperately poor Cambodia he is still among the lucky ones. His mother, Phorn Sileap, can’t afford him private medical care. She earns less than $2 each day working in the capital city Phnom Penh as a waste recycler.

But a clinic set up in the slum area where Phorn Sileap lives has identified Thorn’s condition and he will be sent to hospital for intensive treatment. A report in the science journal Nutrients estimates that malnutrition in Cambodia is costing the country $266 million annually, said Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman, reporting from Phnom Penh.

Cambodia’s GDP is growing at more than 6.5 percent annually, the fastest in the region, but the financial burden of dealing with malnutrition is excessive for this developing country, Rahman said.

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