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More than one in four children under the age of 5 in the world live in “severe food poverty”, or more than 180 million children who risk serious after-effects due to lack of a nutritious and diversified diet, Unicef warns.
A “shocking” number of children “survive on a very poor diet, consuming products from two or fewer food groups,” explains Harriet Torlesse, one of the authors of the report published this Wednesday, June 5.
According to the recommendations of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), young children should consume foods from at least five of eight groups every day (breast milk, cereals, fruits and vegetables rich in vitamin A, meat or fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, other fruits and vegetables).
“A cycle of poverty from generation to generation”
But 440 million children under the age of 5 (or 66%) living in the hundred low- and middle-income countries studied do not have daily access to these five groups, and therefore live in a situation of “food poverty” And among them, some 181 million (or 27%) consume foods belonging to two groups at best.
“These children who consume only two food groups per day, for example rice and a little milk, are 50% more likely to suffer serious forms of malnutrition”, warns the boss of Unicef, Catherine Russell, in a communicated.
Serious forms such as emaciation, extreme weight loss which can lead to death. And if these children survive and grow up, “they do not flourish. They do less well in school, and as adults, they have more difficulty earning a living, this maintains a cycle of generational poverty in generation,” explains Harriet Torlesse.
“The brain, the heart, the immune system, important for development, for protection against diseases, depend on vitamins, minerals, proteins,” insists this nutrition expert.
90% of children in Gaza affected
Although data does not exist for rich countries, children from poor homes are certainly not spared from these nutritional deficiencies either.
The report places particular emphasis on the situation in Gaza where the Israeli offensive provoked by the unprecedented Hamas attack on October 7 has led “the food and health systems to collapse.”
Based on five series of data collections carried out by SMS between December and April from families benefiting from a financial aid program in the Gaza Strip, UNICEF estimates that 9 out of 10 children live in severe food poverty there. Data not necessarily representative which, however, illustrates the catastrophic deterioration of the situation since 2020, where only 13% of children lived in this situation, according to the UN agency.
