Behind Every Food Crisis Is a Child Nutrition Crisis
USAID and partners rally to fight the deadliest form of malnutrition
While the global food crisis is grabbing headlines, young children are paying the starkest toll. Malnutrition drives nearly half of deaths in children under the age of 5 around the world.
As of 2020, more than 45 million young children globally were affected by wasting — meaning they were rapidly losing muscle and fat mass from not getting enough nutritious food to eat or repeated bouts of disease, increasing their risk of illness and death. More than 13 million were severely wasted — the most at risk of death and in urgent need of treatment.
“No child should die from malnutrition when we have the tools to stop it. It’s that simple. But reaching that goal will require others to step up. This is one of the best investments, one of the best bargains that we have in our toolkit for dealing with hunger, and for dealing with the need for more nutrition, and ultimately, for development.” — USAID Administrator Samantha Power
The shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic on global development and supply systems have dramatically increased the number of children suffering from wasting.
This global child malnutrition crisis has been made worse by the historic drought in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, persistent ongoing humanitarian crises, and the compounding impacts of global food insecurity exacerbated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
UNICEF estimates that the global food crisis will push an additional 260,000 children into severe wasting in the 15 most affected countries.
But we have solutions. USAID supports community-based management of acute malnutrition and a transformational product called ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF, which has revolutionized the treatment of wasting.
With this approach, communities and frontline health workers identify children who need treatment early and provide them with the necessary therapeutic food, medicine, and care. Most children can then recover at home, and only the most severe cases need to be referred to clinics.
Treating children who suffer from wasting saves lives, and preventing it in the first place helps communities thrive.
“I have visited many health centers in Maradi region, where I often see grandmothers bringing their grandchildren for treatment. Seeing the joy of these grandmothers, as their grandchildren are brought back from the brink of death, always gives me a lot of emotions.” — Mariam Diallo, acting office director for humanitarian assistance at USAID’s Mission in Niger
Despite these proven solutions, as of 2020, only about a third of children in need of wasting treatment received the services they require. In this time of global crises, the need is increasing, and so is the cost of treatment.
The world has made bold commitments to fight acute malnutrition in children, with a target of reducing it to less than 5% of children by 2025. United Nations agencies and their partners have developed a Global Action Plan on Child Wasting, and 23 governments in countries experiencing high rates of child wasting have created road maps that lay out the priorities and the financing needed to stop this life-threatening condition.
In response to the extraordinary need, USAID has scaled up its support for treatment of children with wasting through partners UNICEF and World Food Programme in the countries most affected by the global food crisis, totaling around $500 million this year. USAID also provided the largest increase in services to treat wasting on record, with an additional one-time investment of $200 million to UNICEF to scale up access to treatment and respond to immediate needs in the most affected contexts.
But USAID and the U.S. Government cannot address this challenge alone. This summer, USAID Administrator Samantha Power, the Eleanor Crook Foundation, the Child Relief International Foundation, the ELMA Relief Foundation, and Chair of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation Sir Chris Hohn announced an additional $50 million in investment to accelerate action on acute malnutrition.
Administrator Power issued a call to action: a goal of mobilizing at least an additional $250 million in investments for action on acute malnutrition to be announced at the United Nations General Assembly.
Next week, Administrator Power, UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell, and the Government of Senegal will host “The Child Malnutrition Crisis — Pledging to Save Lives,” an event that will celebrate frontline workers addressing this crisis and stakeholders who have committed increased resources, and to call for even more action.
No child should die from malnutrition when we have the tools to prevent and treat it. Together we can mobilize the resources necessary so that no child does.
Watch the livestream of the event “The Child Malnutrition Crisis — Pledging to Save Lives” here.
