The director-general of the World Health Organisation says an additional 10,000 children a month could die this year from malnutrition as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking at a U.N Food and Agriculture conference, said he expected a 14% increase this year in children suffering from malnutrition as a result of the outbreak. This equates to 6.7 million more malnourished children, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
“The pandemic has caused serious disruptions to essential services, immunisation, maternal services, child nutrition, family planning and more,” he said. We cannot accept a world where the rich have access to healthy diets while the poor are left behind. After the economic devastation of the pandemic, governments must work with the private sector and civil society to support sustainable food systems and end subsidies for producers of unhealthy foods, the WHO director-general added. Millions of lives could be saved if countries expanded childhood feeding programmes, reduced marketing of unhealthy foods and used fiscal policies to drive better food choices amongst consumers, he said.
UNICEF shared similar concerns in July. The organization warned 6.7 million children under the age of 5 could become undernourished due to the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. “It is increasingly clear that the repercussions of the pandemic are causing more harm to children than the disease itself,” said the executive director of UNICEF, Henrietta Fore, in the July press release. “Household poverty and food insecurity rates have increased,” she said. “Essential nutrition services and supply chains have been disrupted. Food prices have soared. As a result, the quality of children’s diets has gone down and malnutrition rates will go up.” Many of these children are in danger of “wasting,” or becoming so malnourished that they become too frail to perform daily tasks and suffer a greater risk of death, according to UNICEF.
More than 550,000 additional children each month are being struck by what is called wasting, according to the UN — malnutrition that manifests in spindly limbs and distended bellies. Over a year, that’s up 6.7 million from last year’s total of 47 million. Wasting and stunting can permanently damage children physically and mentally. Dr Francesco Branca, the WHO head of nutrition said that the food security effects of the COVID crisis are going to reflect many years from now. There is going to be a societal effect. From Latin America to South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa, more poor families than ever are staring down a future without enough food. In April, World Food Program head David Beasley warned that the coronavirus economy would cause global famines “of biblical proportions” this year.
