News:United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund-UNICEF has released “The State of the World’s Children Report”.
Facts:
Key Highlights of the report:
- The report has said that a third of the world’s children under five years of age which is around 700 million have nutrition problems.They are undernourished or are facing overweight problems.
- It has also stated that despite 40% drop in stunting of children in poor countries between 1990 and 2015,149 million are still too short for their age.
- The report warns that poor eating and feeding practices start from the earliest days of a child’s life.It stated that breastfeeding can save lives, but only 42% of children under six months of age are exclusively breastfed.
- Further,the report has also said that 50 million children are affected by wasting.
Suggestions:
- Empowering families, children and young people to demand nutritious food, including by improving nutrition education and using proven legislation such as sugar taxes to reduce demand for unhealthy foods.
- Driving food suppliers to do the right thing for children by incentivizing the provision of healthy, convenient and affordable foods.
- Building healthy food environments for children and adolescents by using proven approaches, such as accurate and easy-to-understand labelling and stronger controls on the marketing of unhealthy foods.
- Mobilizing supportive systems – health, water and sanitation, education and social protection – to scale up nutrition results for all children.
- Collecting, analyzing and using good-quality data and evidence to guide action and track progress.
Additional information:
UNICEF
- UNICEF, acronym of United Nations Children’s Fund, formerly United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund,
- It was created by the United Nations General Assembly in 1946. It is headquartered in New York, USA.
- It is a special program of the United Nations (UN) devoted to aiding national efforts to improve the health, nutrition, education, and general welfare of children.
Note: Stunting- low height for age, Wasting- low weight compared to height, Underweight- low weight for age. Malnutrition includes both under and over nutrition.
