Category Archives: Malnutrition

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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Nigeria’s child development crisis is a tragedy. Here’s how we can end it

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Investment in health and education and an end to early marriage could transform Africa’s most populous country

If you want a window on the condition of children in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, there is no better vantage point than the Katanga health centre in the impoverished northern state of Jigawa.

In a hut that passes for a nutrition clinic, a group of 25 women wait with their children. Tiny bodies bearing the hallmarks of acute malnutrition – distended stomachs and twig-thin limbs – are lifted into a weighing harness and their arms measured to check for signs of wasting. Ali, who has just reached his first birthday, weighs only 5kg – the average age of a two-month-old in the UK. His mother is 14.

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Zimbabwe on verge of ‘manmade starvation’, warns UN envoy

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Food shortages affecting 60% of country’s population threaten to make political instability worse, says UN expert

Zimbabwe is on the brink of manmade starvation with close to 60% of the population now food insecure, a UN envoy has said.

Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said the situation was likely to escalate political instability in the southern African nation. After an 11-day visit to parts of the country worst hit by the El Niño-induced drought, Elver said widespread food insecurity was being exacerbated by hyperinflation.

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UN warns Burkina Faso could become ‘another Syria’ as violence soars

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Children bear the brunt as extremism and climate crisis drive almost 500,000 people from their homes

The UN food agency has warned of an “escalating humanitarian crisis” in Burkina Faso, driven by growing extremist violence and the long-term impact of climate crisis in the arid central Sahel region.

A sharp increase in attacks, the result of the west African country becoming embroiled in the jihadist insurgency that began in the region in early 2015, has forced almost half a million people from their homes.

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‘Failing’ food system leaves millions of children malnourished or overweight

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Unicef report finds poorest children at greatest risk, while price of healthy food in rich nations drives food poverty

At least one in three children under five are either undernourished or overweight, and one in two lack essential vitamins and nutrients, the UN children’s agency has warned.

The Unicef report laid bare the alarming rate at which poor diets and a “failing” food system are damaging children, saying that “millions are eating too little of what they need and millions are eating too much of what they don’t need: poor diets are now the main risk factor for the global burden of disease”.

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Fighting climate crisis by avoiding meat ignores poor countries’ needs – report

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Study recommends move away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to reducing carbon footprint

A “one-size-fits-all” solution to addressing the climate crisis through our diets could be unhelpful, as how we eat affects the environment in different ways depending on where we live and how our food is sourced, according to a new report.

Although reducing the consumption of meat and animal-based products globally could lower greenhouse gas emissions, it could also have adverse impacts on people’s health and nutrition in some countries, according to a report published online in the Global Environmental Change journal on Monday.

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World hunger on the rise as 820m at risk, UN report finds

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Eliminating hunger by 2030 is an immense challenge, say heads of UN agencies

More than 820 million people worldwide are still going hungry, according to a UN report that says reaching the target of zero hunger by 2030 is “an immense challenge”.

The number of people with not enough to eat has risen for the third year in a row as the population increases, after a decade when real progress was made. The underlying trend is stabilisation, when global agencies had hoped it would fall.

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Wiping out hunger in Africa could cost just $5bn. What are we waiting for? | Feike Sijbesma

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Ripping off the bandage of food aid and investing in self-sufficiency is the only way to fight malnutrition

Billions are spent on humanitarian aid, yet nearly 60 million children across Africa go to bed hungry.

Efforts to alleviate the constant cycle of droughts, poverty and war have caused new problems. The biggest of these is a crippling dependency on food aid that is undermining much of the continent’s efforts to feed itself.

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Two million people at risk of starvation as drought returns to Somalia

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Agencies sound the alarm over ‘climate crisis’ after devastation of crops and livestock

More than 2 million people could face starvation by the end of the summer, unless there are urgent efforts to respond to the drought in Somalia.

Mark Lowcock, the UN’s humanitarian chief, said the country is facing one of the driest rainy seasons in more than three decades, and a “rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation”.

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Nearly half of all child deaths in Africa stem from hunger, study shows

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Almost 60 million children deprived of food despite continent’s economic growth, in what is ‘fundamentally a political problem’

One in three African children are stunted and hunger accounts for almost half of all child deaths across the continent, an Addis Ababa-based thinktank has warned.

In an urgent call for action, a study by the African Child Policy Forum said that nearly 60 million children in Africa do not have enough food despite the continent’s economic growth in recent years.

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