In the face of worsening conflict, climate change, rising cost of living, and COVID-19 aftershocks, scaling up wasting prevention, detection, and treatment services will make a marked difference in child survival and well-being. Undernutrition accounts for about 45% of deaths among children under five. The most deadly form of undernutrition, wasting (dangerously low weight for height), impacts over 45 million children around the world daily and kills over 1 million children per year.
The number of children globally who are suffering from wasting continues to dramatically increase as these multiple crises rage on. Greater emphasis is needed on prevention, detection, and treatment of child wasting across emergency and development contexts, as two thirds of all children living with wasting globally do not live in emergency contexts.
The Wasting Advocacy Coalition is a civil society-led, multi-stakeholder global advocacy coalition that aims to ensure that each child vulnerable to wasting has access to prevention, detection, and treatment. To maximize our collective impact on child survival in the hunger and nutrition crisis, the Wasting Advocacy Coalitions identifies 7 policy actions outlined in this new brief – accessible here or available for download below.
