Word: kwashiorkor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...result of the apartheid system is that African wages are extremely low. Most Africans do not get enough to live on. In this, the most industrialized country in Africa, a country which exports food worldwide, cases of disease due to malnutrition--kwashiorkor, rickets, etc.--are common, but only among blacks. In some areas in the Bantustans women and children can afford to eat only three times a week. (5) Four out of five African workers in the urban areas show signs of malnutrition...
Starvation is only one of the ways in which hunger kills. People whose bellies are full can still die of malnutrition if their diets lack certain essential elements. Lack of the proteins containing essential amino acids-found in milk, meat, fish, beans and nuts-can bring on kwashiorkor, a wasting disease that kills tens of thousands of children each year in Africa, India, Southeast Asia and parts of South America. Kwashiorkor victims, whose tissues are usually swollen with fluid, develop a scaly rash and liver troubles. They are most easily recognized by the characteristic that gave the disease its Ghanaian...