Shockingly, children wasted and stunted by malnutrition before age five have become an urgent global crisis, although every dollar spent on preventing child malnutrition brings a $16 return in reduced health costs and increased productivity.
A distressed joint statement unusually signed by six United Nations agencies said today: “As principals of the United Nations humanitarian system, we have all looked into the blank stare and nearly lifeless body of a badly malnourished child, whose ever-so shallow breathing is often the only sign of life. We have all been deeply affected when a child could not be saved.”
The number of hungry people worldwide has increased to 820 million in recent years, after decades of falling. That includes nearly 50 million children under the age of five who are “wasted” – meaning they are suffering from acute malnutrition and 149 million who are “stunted” – meaning they are suffering stunted growth caused by malnutrition.
Eliminating malnutrition for children has been an American priority and on the international agenda for decades but the problems are worsening. Major hurdles include providing access to healthy and nutritious diets at all times and ensuring that families with acutely malnourished children can obtain life-saving treatments more easily. Currently, many parents travel hundreds of miles to get a child to a clinic. So, treatment facilities and outreach clinics must be brought to their communities.
The crisis is so urgent that the UN will launch a new Global Plan of Action on Wasting before this year end to underline commitment over the next decade to stop malnutrition before it occurs. The goal is to ensure that all children and women suffering from acute malnutrition receive the treatment they need.
The central challenge is to break the transmission cycle of malnutrition that has persisted from generation to generation. Many children are already undernourished in the womb because mothers do not have access to healthy diets.
After birth, they are at greater risk of living a life in poverty, which means their children will be more likely to suffer the same fate, turning wasted and stunted children into an intergenerational cycle.
Children who survive the risky pregnancies and the first critical months of life are more likely to have some form of malnutrition – being stunted or wasted – and millions suffer both forms at the same time. They are much more likely to die before the age of 5 because their immunity to infections is weakened by a lack of nutrients.
Those who survive may go on to suffer poor growth and mental development. In many cases, their cognitive development is permanently impaired, and they perform worse in school and are less productive as adults.
An important pathway to breaking the cycle is to improve tools available to treat and prevent malnutrition. The six agencies are supporting research to ensure improvements to existing treatments and the World Health Organization will publish comprehensive, updated guidelines on treating acute malnutrition (“wasting”) by the middle of 2021.
“With conflict driving much of the growth in hunger and malnutrition in recent years, we are streamlining treatment and prevention for acute malnutrition in complex emergencies,” the agencies said.
However, they recognize that the larger burden of malnutrition is outside of conflict zones, so they are want to work with governments and other partners to create and implement prevention and treatment programmes to deal with the scourge.
Of all those working in this domain, the UN agencies have the most hands on experience of services required to recover from wasting, including nutrition treatment, treatment of infections such as diarrheal diseases, hygiene and sanitation services, and access to clean water and the nutritious diets needed for heathy growth.
Every year, the UN provides 10 million children suffering from acute malnutrition (wasting) with services and delivers food supplements to two million malnourished pregnant women and new mothers. At a broader level, families with infants and children need more help to develop livelihoods, obtain social protections and acquire knowledge about healthy growth of their children.
The six UN agencies are: The Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the Children’s’ Agency (UNICEF), the World Food Programme and the UN Humanitarian Affairs Office.