Anaemia and child health surveillance.

Anaemia and child health surveillance Malnutrition has been a world problem throughout the ages. Lloyd de Mause, in his 'History of childhood', traced many of the causes from the deliberate restriction of food for young Spartans in Plutarch's time to make them physically strong to prolonged breast feeding with late weaning at 1 to 3 years of age in the 12th and 13th centuries and the use of starvation for punishment in the Middle Ages-a form of child abuse.1