[7] All programs and initiatives have faced copious challenges and their individual success rates vastly vary as a result.
In a study of a randomly chosen rural South African community, 13.2% of children were found to have abnormally low levels of calcium in their blood.
[14] Rickets causes weakness and pain in bones and dental structures, impaired growth, muscle cramps, and skeletal deformities.
Dr. D Blumhson, a physician, notes a high rate of pellagra among the patients of a hospital in Soweto, South Africa.
[18] Pellagra causes gastrointestinal discomforts like diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and poor appetite.
Scurvy, a disease that develops from an extended shortage of Vitamin C, has previously been found prevalent in certain South African mining populations.
[25][26] Because Vitamin C plays a vital role in the formation of connective tissues, a deficiency in it may also cause complications with the immune system, iron absorption, cholesterol metabolism.
According to UNICEF, factors that can cause malnutrition include but are not limited to stress, trauma, poor psychological care, neglect, and abuse.
Because the health cost of not breastfeeding a child is not widely known, most South African women chose the latter option and turn to baby formula to replace breast milk as the main nutritional source for their infants.
[11] The formula readily available to the average South African woman does not provide the sufficient nutrients necessary to sustain an infant when utilized by itself.
The first two years of a person's life constitutes the most vulnerable period for malnutrition, making this lack of nutrients especially detrimental to an infant's health.
[8] Various rural South African groups lead agricultural cultivation-based lifestyles that only allow them to live on the very limited amount of resources given to them by their land.
"[32] Research was done to compare the frequency of kwashiorkor among five African groups: the Maasai, the Kikuyu, the Batussi, the Bahutu, the Pieraerts, and the Wakamba.
The research found no incidences of kwashiorkor among the Masai, Batussi, the Pieraert, and a small part of the Bahutu who in addition to vegetables and grains, also cultivate beans.
[32] This shows that South African people who have an agricultural cultivation-based lifestyle are at high risk for malnutrition.
[31] The typical undernourishing South African diet is based on the main staples of rice, porridge, and maize.
[34] The unemployment rate partly stems from South Africa's unstable macroeconomic status that regardless of modern attempts, is yet to be effectively controlled.
UNICEF states that the main causes of malnutrition are "household food insecurity, inadequate care for the vulnerable groups such as maternal and childcare, insufficient essential human services including health, education, water and environmental sanitation and housing.
[8] It is estimated that by simply increasing Vitamin A and C intake along with improving breastfeeding methods, the lives of 2.4 million children throughout the world could be saved annually.
In accordance with the goal of the United Nations, the South Africa Department of Health established the Integrated Nutrition Program in 1995.
[7] Since the establishment of the INP in 1995, South Africa has adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes to promote breastfeeding.
[7] It will also need to promote the extension of maternity leave benefits to give working South African mothers sufficient time and resources to breastfeed.
[46] For example, the Vitamin A supplementation program has been criticized for its struggles with reaching its most vulnerable target: children and post-partum women.
[52] Even after the 2006 South African amendment of the District Health Information System, which was supposed to provide the case fatality rates of severe malnourishment among children in hospitals, the lack of identification of malnutrition-related deaths remains high.
[46] UNICEF, in conjunction with the World Health Organization, established the IMCI to increase child survival in areas with poor resources.
[53] IMCI aims to achieve this through a combination of improved management of common childhood diseases and proper nutrition and immunization.
[55] This presents a problem because most ill South African children are never seen by a nutritionist so they have no other way of learning how to have a proper nutrition.
According to the World Health Organization, the deviation from the average weight of children under age five in South Africa has dropped from 31.5% to 8.7% from 1994 to 2008.
[60] The World Health Organization showed that over the span of thirteen years (1995 to 2008), the deviation from the average height of children under age five in South Africa has slightly decreased from 28.7% to 23.9%.
[10] Similar statistics are true for the rural areas of the Limpopo Province in northern South Africa.