Kwashiorkor
Kwashiorkor, desnutrición proteica infantil
- Date
- 1933-1935 · confidence high
- Place
- Accra, Greater Accra, Ghana
- Credited to
- Cicely Williams
- People
- 👤 Cicely Williams1893–1992
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
A description of a disease in weaned children on a maize diet, with oedema and skin lesions, distinct from simple starvation. It adopted the Ga name meaning 'the disease of the child displaced by the next one'.
Published in Archives of Disease in Childhood (1933) and The Lancet (1935). Its exact cause (protein deficiency, oxidative stress, gut microbiota) is still debated.
What it led to
- recognition of protein malnutrition
- breastfeeding and infant nutrition programmes
- maternal and child health in poor countries