New York (dpa) - The UN Children's Fund said Monday it has been
able to achieve "real progress" against stunting, which affects one
in five children around the world.
UNICEF said accelerated progress is now possible and necessary to
fight stunted growth, which it called the "hidden face of poverty"
for estimated 165 million children under age of 5 worldwide.
Stunting, which is irreversible, is caused mostly by malnutrition
during the crucial periods of growth in childhood. It can make a
child too short for his or her age and deprive normal growth of the
brain and cognitive capacity.
"Stunting can kill opportunities in life for a child and kill
opportunities for development for a nation," said UNICEF executive
director Anthony Lake in the newly released report, Improving child
nutrition: The achievable imperative for global progress.
"Our evidence of the progress that is being achieved shows that
now is the time to accelerate it."
UNICEF called for scaling up nutritional programmes in Ethiopia,
Haiti, Nepal, Peru, Rwanda, Inda, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
Sri Lanka, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania and Vietnam because 80 per cent of
the world's stunted children live there.
India, with a population of more than 1 billion, has 61 million
stunted children, but progress is being made. UNICEF said the number
of stunted dropped to 23 per cent in 2011, from 38 per cent in
2005-06.
In Peru, the number of stunted fell by a third between 2006 and
2011 under a child malnutrition initiative, UNICEF said.
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