In 2018, there were 149 million stunted children, 49 million wasted children and 40 million overweight children according to the new UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates.
The report covers measures of child malnutrition used to track development progress against major goals including the Sustainable Development Goals – particularly, Goal 2 to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture”.
Global progress in stunting has been steady, but not fast enough to reach targets. In Africa, although stunting has declined from 38% to 30% from 2000 to 2018, the number of stunted children increased from 50.3 to 58.8 million in the same time period.
These new estimates suggest that we are still far from a world without malnutrition and that current efforts need to be scaled up if the World Health Assembly targets and the Sustainable Development Goals of halving the number of children stunted by 2030 are to be met.