World Food Day: One third of under-fives around the world suffering from long-term malnutrition

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[16 October 2006] - On World Food Day Save the Children is calling on governments, including DFID and the EU, to provide more support to the 170 million children under five - that’s 30 per cent of under-fives globally - who are suffering from chronic (long-term) malnutrition.

Chronic malnutrition is caused by children not having enough food and only being able to eat the same kinds of food - mostly carbohydrates like rice and maize - day after day. As well as not getting all of the nutrients they need to grow, malnourished children are often ill and so don’t feel hungry. The majority of chronically malnourished children live in South Asia.

Anna Taylor, Save the Children’s Head of Hunger Reduction, said: “We’ve all seen pictures of children in emergencies suffering from acute malnutrition, but the consequences for children who are malnourished in the long term can be just as dangerous. Malnutrition is the main contributor to illness and disease in the world and the underlying cause for deaths from many of the principal child killers including diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria, measles and AIDS”.

Chronic malnutrition causes stunted growth and significantly increases the likelihood of premature death. Stunting doesn’t happen as quickly as the rapid weight loss associated with acute malnutrition, but the consequences for children can be just as devastating. As well as increasing the likelihood of premature death, those who do survive are at much greater risk from illness, and are far less able to withstand infection. Failure to grow and reduced body size also has major long-term impacts on brain development and activity, which leads to lower IQs and poorer performance at school.

On World Food Day, Save the Children is calling on governments including DFID and the EU:

  • To acknowledge that chronic malnutrition has been ignored for too long
  • To take urgent action to get the nutrition target of the first millennium development goal back on track
  • To support long term, direct cash transfers for the poorest people, as a key strategy for tackling chronic malnutrition, so that families can better feed their children

A major part of Save the Children’s work to reduce child malnutrition and hunger involves giving families direct cash payments. Such programmes have been shown to significantly improve children’s nutritional status as families are able to feed their children more frequently and to secure a better livelihood.

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