The East African: Eric Turyasingura chases after a ball made from polythene bags outside his mud-brick home in the mountainous southern Uganda.

Yelling in his mother tongue, Nkore, “Arsenal with the ball! Arsenal with the ball!” he jostles with his younger brothers for possession. The fame of the English football club has reached even his little ears.

Pretending to be a sports star offers a moment of escape from his daily struggles. At five years, Eric’s tiny body already tells a story of poverty and lost opportunity.

He is six inches shorter than he should be for his age. His arms and legs are pencil-thin and his head is out of proportion to his body. Because he is stunted, experts say his chances of growing up healthy, learning at full potential, and getting a job, let alone playing professional soccer, have greatly diminished.

In 2013, a UN report said across the world, one in four children under five years — a total of 165 million — were stunted. Last year, The Lancet estimated that under-nutrition contributed 45 per cent of all under-five deaths.

Beginning in the womb as poverty-stricken mothers live hand-to-mouth, stunting can be a lifelong affliction. Studies show it is linked to poor cognition and educational performance, low adult wages and lost productivity.

A stunted child is nearly five times more likely to die from diarrhoea than a healthy one because of the physiological changes in a stunted body.

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