UNITED NATIONS, May 2 (UPI) -- The U.N. Children's Fund said more than a quarter of children under 5-years-old in developing countries are underweight because of poor nutrition.
UNICEF said malnutrition is so bad many of them have a life-threatening degree of hunger which contributes to about 5.6 million child deaths each year, while remedies such as providing vitamin A cost just a few cents.
"Few things have more impact than nutrition on a child's ability to survive, learn effectively and escape a life of poverty," said UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman Tuesday in issuing the study, "Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition."
She told reporters at U.N. World Headquarters in New York that "one underweight and undernourished child is an individual tragedy." She added: "Multiplied by tens of millions, under-nutrition becomes a global threat to society and to the economy."
The report calls for the urgent establishment of a nutrition "safety net" as a central component of national policies to guarantee access to remedies, ranging from vitamin A capsules and iron and iodine supplements to eliminating unsafe feeding practices.
It notes that the rate of underweight children under 5 has fallen only slightly since 1990 -- proof that the world is failing children and still far off track for achieving one of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
This entails halving the proportion of children who are underweight for their age. Despite progress in some countries, developing world averages have dropped just 5 percent in the last 15 years, according to the report.
Today, 27 percent of children in developing countries are underweight, or around 146 million persons. Nearly three-quarters of these live in just 10 countries, and over half in just three countries: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
