Children with malnutrition are at greater risk of death from vaccine-preventable diseases than are children with no significant signs of malnourishment.

Key Evidence: Findings of a systematic review evaluating the relationship between pneumonia and malnourishment found that severely malnourished children in developing countries had 2.5 to 15 times the risk of death. For children with moderate malnutrition, the risk of death ranged from 1.2 to 36.

Key Evidence: A study of children under 5 years of age in Dhaka, Bangladesh found that severely malnourished children were nearly 8 times more likely to suffer death from diarrhea than those who were not severely malnourished.