Closing the Gap: Urgent Actions Needed to Tackle Child Malnutrition Worldwide

UNICEF-WHO-The World Bank: Joint child malnutrition estimates — levels and trends – 2023 edition

The UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank inter-agency team update the joint global and regional estimates of malnutrition among children under 5 years every other year.

TRACKING THE TRIPLE THREAT OF CHILD MALNUTRITION

Nourishment is every child's fundamental right, enabling them to flourish and reach their utmost capabilities. Optimal nutrition fosters their physical and mental growth, liberating them from the shackles of poverty. It empowers them to engage, learn, and actively participate, ensuring lifelong prosperity that extends to future generations.

While progress has been made in enhancing the well-being of mothers and children, with a remarkable one-third reduction in stunting, we must confront the persistent challenge of triple malnutrition: stunting, wasting, and overweight. These obstacles continue to undermine children's survival and hinder their ability to thrive.

Defining the forms of malnutrition* highlighted in this key findings report

Numbers on Stunting, Wasting and Overweight

1. Stunting, which impacted 148.1 million children under the age of 5 globally in 2022, has shown a steady decline over the past decade. The majority of affected children, 52% and 43%, resided in Asia and Africa respectively.
2. In 2022, around 45 million children under the age of 5 (6.8%) experienced wasting, with 13.6 million (2.1%) facing severe wasting. The majority, over three-quarters, of children with severe wasting resided in Asia, while 22% lived in Africa.
3. Globally, the number of children under 5 living with overweight has risen to 37 million, marking an increase of almost 4 million since 2000.
4. Report indicate inadequate advancement towards achieving the global nutrition targets set by the 2025 World Health Assembly (WHA) and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 targets.
5. Only one third of countries are on track to halve the number of children affected by stunting by 2030.
6. Fewer countries are expected to achieve the 2030 target for overweight prevalence. Progress assessment for the wasting target is not possible for nearly half of countries.
7. Intensive efforts are required to reach the global target of reducing the number of children with stunting to 89 million by 2030.
8. Current progress indicates that 39.6 million children will miss this target, with over 80% of them residing in Africa.

A CALL TO ACCELERATE ACTION ON STUNTING REDUCTION

Most Prevalence Region

PREVALENCE

1. Southern Asia has the highest wasting prevalence of any sub-region in the world
2. Only one quarter of children under 5 live in Southern Asia, but this sub-region is home to more than half of all children with wasting.
3. More than three quarters of the worlds severely wasted children live in Asia, yet this region only accounts for half of the worlds children.
4. One out of every five children are affected by overweight in Australia and New Zealand
5. There has been no change in the number of children affected by overweight – in any region – for the last decade
6. Stunting has declined by more than half since 2000 in upper-middle income countries – but overweight is rising steadily, moving further away from the global target
7. While half of all children under 5 live in lower-middle income countries, nearly two thirds of all children with stunting and three quarters of all children with wasting live there

Way forward

1. More intensive efforts are required if the world is to achieve the global target
2. Gaps in the availability of data in some regions makes it challenging to accurately assess progress towards global targets.
3. Regular data collection is therefore critical for monitoring and reporting on country, regional and global progress on child malnutrition.

Suggested Citation

 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. Levels and trends in child malnutrition: UNICEF / WHO / World Bank Group Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates: Key findings of the 2023 edition. New York: UNICEF and WHO; 2023. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO.  

Link for detailed report