About 14 million children to face disruptions to critical nutrition services in 2025 – UNICEF

At least 14 million children are expected to face disruptions to nutrition support and services due to recent and expected global funding cuts leaving them at heightened risk of severe malnutrition and death.

This is according to initial analyses issued by UNICEF as world leaders gather at the Nutrition for Growth Summit in Paris.

Reductions in donor funding threaten to unravel decades of progress for the world’s most vulnerable children and women.

The funding crisis comes at a time of unprecedented need for children who continue to face record levels of displacement, new and protracted conflicts, disease outbreaks and the deadly consequences of climate change all of which are undermining their access to adequate nutrition.

Catherine Russell, UNICEF Executive Director, said over the last decades, they had made impressive progress in reducing child malnutrition globally because of a shared commitment and sustained investment.

“Since 2000, the number of stunted children under the age of five has fallen by 55 million, and the lives of millions of severely malnourished children have been saved. But steep funding cuts will dramatically reverse these gains and put the lives of millions more children at risk.”

Russell said UNICEF was calling on governments and donors to prioritise investments in health and nutrition programmes for children and to allocate more funding to domestic nutrition and health services.

“Good nutrition is the foundation of child survival and development, with impressive returns on investment. Dividends will be measured in stronger families, societies and countries, and a more stable world.”

Additional impacts across 17 high priority countries due to funding cuts include more than 2.4 million children suffering from severe acute malnutrition who could go without Ready-to-use-Therapeutic-Food (RUTF) for the remainder of 2025.

Up to 2,300 life-saving stabilisation centres providing critical care for children suffering from severe wasting with medical complications are at risk of closing or severely scaling back services.

Almost 28,000 UNICEF-supported outpatient therapeutic centres for the treatment of malnutrition are at risk, and in some cases have already stopped operating.

UNICEF noted that “today, levels of severe wasting in children under five remain gravely high in some fragile contexts and humanitarian emergencies. Adolescent girls and women are especially vulnerable.”

It said even before the funding cuts, the number of pregnant and breastfeeding women and adolescent girls suffering from acute malnutrition soared to 6.9 million from 5.5 million representing 25 per cent increase since 2020.

UNICEF expects the figures to rise without urgent action from donors and adequate investments from national governments.

Source: GNA

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