Stunted growth, also known as
stunting and
nutritional stunting, is a reduced
growth rate in
human development. It is a primary manifestation of
malnutrition (or more precisely undernutrition) and recurrent infections, such as
diarrhea and
helminthiasis, in early
childhood and even before birth, due to malnutrition during fetal development brought on by a malnourished mother. The definition of stunting according to the
World Health Organisation (WHO) is for the "height for age" value to be less than two standard deviations of the WHO Child Growth Standards median.