SAFM Interview: More than a quarter of South African children are stunted. For many, it starts before birth

DGMT CEO Dr David Harrison spoke to Ashraf Garda on SAfm’s National Pulse about what poverty actually does to a child’s body and brain. About a thousand children die of severe acute malnutrition in South Africa every year, but Dr Harrison called that the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it sits chronic food insecurity — families so close to the edge that one crisis, like paying a neighbour R700 for a lift to hospital, empties the food cupboard for the month. The result is one in four children stunted, against 6 or 7% in countries with comparable GDP, and a domino effect that runs from a mother with too little to eat in pregnancy, through a child who can afford pap but not protein, to a young person who falls behind at school and never catches up. Dr Harrison was clear that none of this is inevitable: make protein affordable, feed mothers before birth, reduce alcohol harms and help communities grow their own food.