What we are doing
Stolen lives and blighted futures: Shining a light on the hidden crisis of child malnutrition
By Ben Phillips, Mobilisation Director, Save the Children
“It all started when Yameen was about six months old. He began to get thin. Then, at fourteen months, he started to develop scars and wounds around the mouth. When he got diahorrea, he was so frail, so weak, he weighed barely 2kg.”
Jostna’s description of the plight of her youngest child is all too common in her home district of Bhola, Bangladesh – and for millions of the world’s poorest children. Yameen lived. Millions do not.
It’s ironic that at the formal dinners at which world leaders sit down to resolve global crises, they rarely discuss the most brutal crisis of all – the 300 children who die every hour of every day because of malnutrition.
Malnutrition is an underlying cause of more than a third of children’s deaths. But it’s not recorded on death certificates and, as a result, it’s not effectively addressed. The children who do survive are often left permanently damaged by stunting – physically weaker, more vulnerable to disease, and less able to do well at school. At least 170 million children are affected by stunting.
And it could get worse. A combination of rising food prices, climate change and demographic shifts means that, if urgent action is not taken, this situation is only likely to deteriorate in the future. New figures published this week by Save the Children estimate 450 million children will be stunted from malnutrition by 2025.
Every child has the right to a life free from hunger. No child should die because they are not able to eat enough nutritious food.
But tackling malnutrition is not only a moral obligation, it is good economics too. Left unchecked, malnutrition can lose a country 2 – 3% of the national income.
Conversely, proven, low-cost nutritional interventions during childhood can increase individual adult earnings by 46%. Well-nourished children are less prone to disease and illness, thus lowering the cost of healthcare. And in an interconnected world economic progress in the poorest countries will benefit the whole global economy.
Improving child nutrition and reducing levels of child mortality can lead to smaller families and more sustainable societies. When children are healthier and more likely to survive, and when parents have access to voluntary family planning methods, many parents will choose to have fewer children, further apart, and to invest in the children who now survive.
Significant progress has already been made globally in saving children’s lives. The number of children not making it to their fifth birthday has fallen from 12 million in 1990 to 7.6 million in 2011. This is good news. But it’s not yet fast enough to ensure that the world meets the MDGs by 2015, and no comfort for a mother who has lost her child.
Fortunately, child malnutrition is a crisis we can fix. 80% of stunted children live in just 20 countries. Proven, cost-effective methods solutions like support for breastfeeding, social protection schemes and investing in small farmers, have been shown to work. And where there is a way, there ought to be a will.
Save the Children’s new flagship global report, A Life Free from Hunger – Tackling child malnutrition, sets out the scale and the causes of the malnutrition crisis, and how it can be overcome.
2012 will be a critical year for catalysing global political action on nutrition. Around the world, more and more voices are getting behind the call to tackle child malnutrition. Every time world leaders meet this year, we’ll be urging them to do whatever they can to ensure every child has the food they need to survive and thrive.
