By Wachira Kigotho

Enrolments in primary schools are up but the nagging question is the quality of education, especially in rural schools where children are taking longer to acquire basic numeracy and literacy skills.

A report, Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) 2008-09, says many Kenyan children suffer from effects of severe malnutrition –– a condition that impairs physical and mental development.

The survey by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute and other local and international associates shows 35 per cent of children in Kenya are stunted. About 14 per cent are severely stunted and seven per cent being wasted. Wasting is the result of severe malnutrition.

This means one in every three children in the country is too short and about one in 20 too thin.

This is in sharp contrast with the World Health Organisation’s classification indicating that in a healthy and well-nourished population, only one in 1,000 children is severely undernourished.

The level of severe wasting is more than 10 times than expected. Worse still, the level of stunting is 125 per cent over healthy levels.

Stunting levels were found to be slightly higher in boys than girls and in rural children than those in urban areas. Prevalence of stunting varies from 29 per cent in Nairobi to 42 per cent in Eastern Province.

The report says children of mothers with secondary or higher education are also less stunted compared to those whose carers had primary education or never went to school.

Trends in nutritional status also indicated a large number of children in rural areas and in urban slums are underweight and likely to contract common diseases.

"Sixteen per cent Kenyan children are underweight, with four percent classified as severely underweight," says the report.

Comparisons of the results of the current survey with those from the 2003 KDHS indicated there was no change in the proportion of children who are stunted, wasted and underweight.

Comprehensive studies carried at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK, say there are links between the long-term effects of health and nutrition in early childhood and educational outcomes.

"Many children less than five years of age in Sub-Saharan Africa fail to reach their potential in cognitive development because of poverty, poor health and nutrition and deficient care," says Prof Kevin Lewin, a professor of education at University of Sussex.

Such children eventually have low incomes, high fertility and provide poor care for their children leading to the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

"This loss of human potential has been estimated to lead to high deficit in adult income and to have implications for national development," says Dr Pat Pridmore, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London. She identified stunting, wasting, iodine and iron deficiency anaemia as key to eroding mental development.

Whereas food scarcity is the major cause of malnutrition, evidence indicates negative traditional cultural practices at household level have contributed significantly to child malnutrition.

According to the current edition of Progress for Children: A Report Card on Child Protection, a publication of the United Nations Children’s Fund, domestic violence is common when women do not ‘give their husbands food properly’.

But even in instances where children are given large portions of food, the diet lacks micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals.

In some parts of the country, children are served portions of starchy foods, commonly deficient in proteins, iron, iodine and vitamin A and other micronutrients that would deter health shocks among primary school kids.

"Most of those children are also anaemic and contract respiratory diseases and other infections that interfere with their mental development," says Pridmore.

Worms infestations aggravate the health problems of children who are under nourished.

Experts say without proper nutrition, free education will have little impact.

Even if all the children were to be gang-pressed into school, the crux of the matter is that over one third of children in Kenya are already intellectually compromised by permanent brain damage caused by lack of the necessary micro-nutrients, short-term hunger and anaemia.