Wasting disease in African children: the challenges ahead.

The painful mouth, fever, diarrhea, and purulent foci, in addition to loss of appetite, severely impair the nutritional state of the child existing on a poor diet ......At the s a m e time, the child whose diet lacks, calories or other essential nutrients may be the child whose skin and other epithelial surfaces are affected by.......... in such a way as leads to severe, and at t i m e s dangerous, form of the disease with its many “complications”..... David Morley,1978