Why do starving kids in Ethiopia have distended bellies?

Answer 1

It's very hard for anyone to understand the life of this people and how they survive their daily
life,they have to walk miles & miles just to look for water...I mean any water !!!! and when they find it they also find that they sharing the same water with other animals dead or alive,water that kill anyone of us but they have to drink it
with no choice but death that's why their tiny bodies are loaded with all kinds of desease
We must do more to help them ,it could happen to anyone.

Answer 2

They suffer from kwashiokar (a disease you contact by taking a lot of carbohydrates and not much protein vitamin etc). People in poor countries like Ethiopia buy bread to feed there children because it is cheap. Sometimes the wealthy and middle class people give them food which is mostly stuff like bread and rice, thereby they get even more carbohydrate in their diet.

Answer 3

because they are malnounrished. They don't get the right minerals, and vitamins. In india, when kids were only feed rice, they developed night blindess. WHY? because rice has no vitamin A or minerals. It's food but useless food.

Answer 4

I think the malnourishment causes their own intestines to digest themselves from the inside, and it must be painful gas that distends their bellies.
Oh I know thats gross, but you asked.

Answer 5

It has something to do with the almost total lack of protien.

http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/k/kwashiorkor/intro.htm

Sorry that I don't know more about it, I am not a medic, but that link might help.

Answer 6

they are full of water and powder milk

Answer 7

no food.