Nutrition and Infection Field Study in Guatemalan Villages, 1959–1964

Abstract

Initially, all three study villages had poor environmental sanitation, little medical care, high mortality, and frequent malnutrition. In one village supplemental feeding of the preschool population without other intervention gave an appreciable but limited improvement in disease incidence and physical growth. A program of preventive medicine and medical care in a second village had no effect on frequency of illness and led to no improvement in physical growth; deaths were fewer. Comparison was to a control village with no added services. Collateral studies increased the usefulness of the basic study and enlarged the results. The broader contribution of the study was better definition of the general health of young children. Most usefully, the size of the problem became measurable by case incidence instead of by the usual dependence on number of deaths. Quantitative information on morbidity revealed a burden of illness on preschool children beyond most estimates; it was greatest in the second year. A publ...