Category Archives: Malnutrition

Famine is now probably present in Gaza, US says

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State department assessment comes after world’s top court ordered Israel to admit food aid into territory

Famine is already probably present in at least some areas of northern Gaza, while other areas are in danger of falling into conditions of starvation, the US state department said on Friday a day after the world’s top court ordered Israel to admit food aid into the territory.

“While we can say with confidence that famine is a significant risk in the south and centre but not present, in the north, it is both a risk and quite possibly is present in at least some areas,” a state department official told Reuters.

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One in five pregnant women in Gaza clinic are malnourished, doctors warn

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Women and children suffering acute malnutrition as territory faces ‘catastrophic conditions’, according to UN

One in five pregnant women treated at a central Gaza clinic are malnourished, doctors have warned, as fuel and medical supply shortages closed the last hospital operating in the north of the strip.

“Every day, we see women and children coming into our clinic suffering from acute malnutrition,” said Dr Maram, the lead physician for Project Hope.

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Free school meals ‘cut obesity and help reading skills’ in England, study finds

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Labour MPs call to extend provision to every primary pupil in England after study finds health and learning improve

Labour is facing calls from MPs to back the provision of free school meals for all primary school children in England, after a new study found evidence that it reduces obesity and boosts reading skills.

Levels of obesity were reduced by 7% to 11% among reception children in the four London boroughs that have already adopted the policy, according to the study seen by the Observer. For children in year six, who had been given free school meals for their entire time in primary school, there was a 5-8% reduction.

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Brazil: dozens of Indigenous children hospitalised amid health crisis

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Health secretary of Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, says 59 children in hospital, 45 of them from the Yanomami people

Dozens of Indigenous children suffering from malnutrition and acute diseases have been hospitalised in northern Brazil, with relatives in hammocks holding their emaciated frames in scenes that underscore the gravity of a public health crisis.

The health secretary of Boa Vista, the capital of Roraima state, said on Friday that 59 Indigenous children were currently at the only pediatric hospital in the state, 45 of them from the Yanomami people. Eight were under intensive care.

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Children go hungry at Kenya refugee camp as malnutrition numbers soar

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MSF charity reports 33% rise in malnourished patients at giant Dadaab complex after influx from drought-stricken Somalia

Malnutrition among children in one of the world’s largest refugee camps has surged over the past year as concerns grow at worsening conditions at the site in Kenya.

Médecins Sans Frontières said its health facility in Dagahaley, a camp in the Dadaab refugee complex, has treated 33% more patients – mainly children – for malnutrition over the past year, while the rate of malnourishment in the camps grew by 45% in the last six months of 2022.

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First food aid for 100 days enters Tigray under ‘humanitarian truce’

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Besieged region has an estimated 2 million people suffering from an extreme lack of food

A convoy of aid trucks has arrived in Tigray, the first emergency food supplies to reach the besieged region of northern Ethiopia by road for more than 100 days.

Two weeks after Abiy Ahmed’s government declared an immediate “humanitarian truce” with rebel Tigrayan forces to allow aid in, the World Food Programme said it had received the assurances it needed to dispatch 20 trucks containing vital supplies of food.

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Patients dying as conflict prevents supplies reaching Tigray hospitals

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Medics unable to keep babies alive, says doctor, as Ethiopia’s civil war creates desperate shortages of drugs, oxygen, fuel and food

People in Tigray are dying due to a lack of oxygen and medicines, a doctor at the region’s largest hospital has said, as medics struggle to care for the sick amid frequent electricity blackouts and fuel shortages.

As the 16-month conflict between Tigrayan forces and Ethiopian government forces drags on, the isolated northern region of 5.5 million people continues to suffer under what the UN has called a de facto blockade.

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‘We pray for rain’: Ethiopia faces catastrophic hunger as cattle perish in severe drought

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Animal carcasses litter the land in areas where the rains have failed, as millions go without enough food and water in a country already grappling with civil war

The circumference of Nimo Abdi Duh’s upper arm measures just 12cm and, while the number means nothing to her, it does to the health workers treating her. Nimo, two, like so many children in the arid lowlands of Ethiopia, is suffering from malnutrition.

“We have been affected by the drought,” says her mother, Shems Dire, looking anxiously on. “We don’t have milk to give to the children. My child is sick due to lack of food, and this happened because of the drought … Our cattle have been harmed by the drought. We have lost so many.

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Criticism of animal farming in the west risks health of world’s poorest | Emma Naluyima Mugerwa and Lora Iannotti

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In the developing world most people are not factory farming and livestock is essential to preventing poverty and malnutrition

The pandemic has pushed poverty and malnutrition to rates not seen in more than a decade, wiping out years of progress. In 2020, the number of people in extreme poverty rose by 97 million and the number of malnourished people by between 118 million and 161 million.

Recent data from the World Bank and the UN shows how poverty is heavily concentrated in rural communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people are surviving by smallholder farming. This autumn there will be two key events that could rally support for them.

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Almost one in three globally go hungry during pandemic – UN

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Big leap in malnutrition during Covid, with fifth of children now believed to be stunted, report warns

The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report published on Monday.

Five UN agencies said the number of people without access to healthy diets grew by 320 million last year to nearly 2.37 billion people– more than the increases in the previous five years combined.

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‘I didn’t eat for days’: hunger stalks Venezuelan refugees

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Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns

A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.

The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.

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‘We could have lost her’: Zimbabwe’s children go hungry as crisis deepens

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As food shortages worsen due to drought and the economic insecurity of lockdown, one in three children are malnourished

Baby Grace lies quietly in the clinical ward under the watchful gaze of her mother, Rose Mapeka. Her parched skin, which hangs off her tiny body, and the milkiness of her eyes, show only too clearly that the 18-month-old is undernourished.

Grace is lucky to be alive. Health workers in Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, identified her as needing immediate hospital treatment for malnutrition during their home visits to the city’s nursing mothers.

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Yemen: in a country stalked by disease, Covid barely registers

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War, hunger and devastating aid cuts have made the plight of Yemenis almost unbearable

On a ward in Ataq general hospital in the dusty central province of Shabwa in Yemen, six-month-old Muna Bassam is lying on her back, eyes closed, her distended belly moving up and down with the labour of breathing.

In the corridor outside her room, a poster shows before-and-after photos of several children admitted to the ward who have managed to recover from acute malnutrition – still painfully thin, but smiling and alert. Muna’s family already took her to hospital once before. Worried about being able to pay for her treatment and fuel to return to the village, their prayers for her this time around are even more urgent.

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African governments failing girls on equality, report finds

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Girls are made to marry too young, excluded from healthcare and are sexually exploited, says African Child Policy Forum

Girls in Africa are being “condemned to a lifetime of discrimination and inequality” due to government failures, according to new data.

Ranking 52 countries in the continent according to how “girl-friendly” they are, a report published on Friday by advocacy group African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) found they were routinely denied education; made to marry too young; endured sexual, physical and emotional abuse at home, work and school; were excluded from healthcare; and were unable to own or inherit property.

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Satellite imagery of Aden indicates scale of pandemic in Yemen

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Academics’ analysis of burial plots points to excess deaths level in crisis-ridden country

A groundbreaking study using high-resolution satellite imagery to analyse graveyards has found that deaths have nearly doubled in Aden, the centre of Yemen’s coronavirus outbreak.

The discovery has given a sense of the true scale of the havoc the pandemic has wreaked on the vulnerable country.

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Poor nutrition in developing countries is costing firms $850bn annually – report

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Business is paying a high price for inadequate diets of employees, research shows, with experts calling on companies to provide living wage and subsidised food

Malnutrition among workers in developing countries is costing businesses up to $850bn (£676bn) a year, according to analysis of the hidden impact of poor diet on productivity.

Worst affected were industries relying on manual labour, including mining, agriculture and construction, according to a report [pdf] by Chatham House and the consultancy Vivid Economics. But it found big losses caused by malnutrition in all 13 business sectors studied, including health and education.

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‘Now we sleep peacefully’: life in Peru transformed by warm houses

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Thermal houses in the Andes are helping combat respiratory illnesses in villages that struggle with freezing temperatures

On a windswept plain more than 4km above sea level, families gather; a throng of colourful, intricately patterned hats, skirts and ponchos. They are gazing curiously at their revamped homes, which now glint in the sun.

Cladding the mud brick homes and absorbing the perpendicular rays of the sun are polycarbonate panels fitted at a slanted angle to the outer walls. In Hanchipacha, a poor village in the highlands of Cusco, in Peru’s southeastern Andes, these panels are a point of pride.

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Malnutrition leading cause of death and ill health worldwide – report

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Coronavirus highlights weakness of food and health systems, as Global Nutrition Report finds one in nine of world’s population is hungry

An overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.

The Global Nutrition Report 2020 found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition as well as the ubiquity and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries, it says.

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Food rations to 1.4 million refugees cut in Uganda due to funding shortfall

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World Food Programme announce 30% relief reduction, as farms and businesses shut in Covid-19 lockdown, fuelling hunger fears

Food rations have been cut to more than 1.4 million vulnerable refugees in Uganda by the World Food Programme (WFP) because of insufficient funds.

Announcing a 30% reduction to the relief food it distributes to refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from neighbouring South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, the WFP in Uganda warned that further cuts could follow.

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‘Yellow bindis’ mean high-risk: India’s new health map for women and children

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Pioneering Rajasthan initiative helps health workers reach families in greatest need first, increasing identification of malnutrition and issues in pregnancy

It’s 10am and time for the first home visit of the day. After consulting a colour-coded map on the wall of the village centre, the three female health workers make their way through the winding lanes of a remote village in Jhalawar district, Rajasthan, where the rice has been harvested and garlic is being planted, to the home of Nirmala.

The yellow bindi (dot) on the map indicates that Nirmala and her children are highly likely to become malnourished without the proper care, which means the family is a priority for health services.

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