August 4, 2016…The day before the Olympics opening ceremony, when governments gather at the Nutrition for Growth (N4G) Initiative on August 4th in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Save the Children is revealing new research which forecasts that by 2030 - the Sustainable Development Goals’ deadline - 129 million children will still find their physical and mental development stunted by malnutrition.
“In fact, children living in 53 countries will continue to be malnourished way into the next century,” warns Patricia Erb, President & CEO of Save the Children. “Simply put, malnutrition will persist because global progress has not been fast enough or inclusive enough”
Click here to read the Unequal Portions here.
Key stunting facts:
- Good nutrition is essential for the development of a healthy immune system and is the key to unlocking every child’s physical and cognitive potential. The failure to provide children with adequate nutrition, especially in the first 1,000 days after conception, throws away human potential that cannot be recovered.
- Children who are poorly nourished are more likely to fall ill, and can die as a result. Nearly half of all deaths in children under five are attributable to under-nutrition
- Malnutrition costs countries billions of dollars every year in lost productivity and holds back economic development, which affects everyone
- The countries with the highest numbers of malnourished children include India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia and China.
- The poorest 20% of children are more than twice (2.26 times) as likely to be stunted as the richest (in our sample of 56 countries)
- Overall, inequalities in malnutrition are widening between different regions within countries, between the richest and the poorest, and between rural and urban areas. Discrimination and exclusion help to create these inequalities.
-ENDS-
