Early childhood nutritional status in CARICOM countries: an overview with respect to five nutrition related millennium development goals.

Previous reviews of nutritional status in children under 5 years describe the Caribbean grouped with Latin America. This paper focuses specifically on the Caribbean and the goals and targets of the Millennium Declaration that have bearing on childhood development. The results indicate that CARICOM countries have made progress in terms of child health as assessed by gross health indicators. Yet, the millennium generation experiences coexistence of undernutrition and overweight in early childhood. The associations of GNI with markers such as poverty indices are somewhat inconsistent with traditional findings and highlight a need to reassess the causes of infant mortality and low birth weight. However, a lack of systematic local data has hampered progress on an individual country basis. Interventions that deal more pointedly with country specific needs are required including those targeting obesity if the MDGs are to be attained by all member states.