ABSTRACT
Nutrition is crucial to the course of chronic and infectious illness and other aspects of human health and well-being. In resource-constrained and wealthy countries alike, poor nutritional status contributes to the leading causes of morbidity and mortality. Nutrition should be an important element of health policy-making, programmes, and education in all countries, but often is not. This chapter reviews, briefly and selectively, global data on the nutritional status of populations, consequences ofmalnutrition, results of programmes designed to address malnutrition, and the challenges that remain.
