Malnutrition in aboriginal children at Yalata, South Australia.

Abstract

Comparative studies of body weight, height, intracellular water representing cell mass, and age, and plasma concentrations of albumin, vitamins, trace elements and iron stores in Aboriginal children aged 6 to 13.5 years, from two rural Aboriginal settlements and one rural Caucasian school (Hawker) provided evidence of significant deficits in one of the Aboriginal settlements (Yalata). Yalata Aboriginal children had lower body weights and heights for age and lower intracellular water values. Plasma albumin, zinc, iron, alpha-tocopherol, beta-carotene and retinol concentrations were lower relative to the normally grown Aboriginal children at Nepabunna. The latter children did not differ from rural Caucasian children for the parameters studied. The reasons for this poorer growth at Yalata may reside in poor nutrition, or repeated bowel infection in postnatal life leading to malabsorption, or both. Limited observational evidence suggests that Giardiasis has a high prevalence at Yalata, and it has been shown elsewhere that Giardiasis is capable of inducing malabsorption with resulting nutritional deficiencies.