[Photo by CDC Global]
Baltimore, October 4, 2016--A staggeringly high proportion -- 43 percent or 250 million -- of children under age five and living in low- and middle-income countries may not reach their developmental potential due to poverty and chronic under nutrition, according to the latest series on early child development, Advancing Early Childhood Development, published today in The Lancet.
"New evidence presented in this Series underscores how influential the early years of life, especially for children under three, are on subsequent health and development," says the lead author of the first paper in the Series and steering committee member Maureen Black, PhD, the John A. Scholl, MD and Mary Louise Scholl, MD Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM). "Not just for individual children, but for their children and subsequent generations."
The power of early childhood development on global health, economic development, and sustainability has been recognized by international agencies, including the World Bank Group, UNICEF, and the World Health Organization. Leaders of those organizations will speak at the launch of the new Series in Washington on October 5.
[For more of this story go to https://www.eurekalert.org/pub...0/uomm-poc100516.php]
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