Hunger has become the most urgent threat to children worldwide by Save the Children 11:42am 19th Jul, 2012   July 2012    The number of hungry children has risen for the first time in a decade, the latest report from Save the Children highlights.    The Child Development Index 2012 says that a significant rise in acutely malnourished children threatens progress in cutting child mortality and getting more children into school. The findings come amid a back drop of rising food and fuel prices, which is making it much harder for families to afford to feed their children properly.    Save the Children chief executive, Justin Forsyth, who"s in Mali, which has been been fractured by civil war and is currently also one of the hungriest countries in the world, said:    “Our global Child Development Report shows that hunger has become the most urgent threat to children worldwide and threatens to drag back progress in saving and improving their lives.    “Hunger has become the Achilles’ heel and unless we tackle it now, it threatens to undermine the overall progress made in cutting child deaths."    The report includes an index of best and worst places to be a child, measuring the number of children in school, under five mortality rates and number of underweight children.    Somalia comes out worst in the survey, reflecting last year’s deadly food crisis which killed tens of thousands of children and left hundreds of thousands displaced. Japan is the best place to be a child in the world.    The index also showed some significant achievements. A child is a third more likely to go to school than the mid 90s. A child is a third less likely to die before their fifth birthday now than during the mid 90s.    However in stark contrast, it shows nutrition is seriously lagging behind and that:    Nutrition showed the least progress of any component of the Child Development Report.    The proportion of acutely malnourished children grew by 1.2 per cent during the 2000s. East Asia had the biggest percentage growth in acute hunger at 17 per cent.    Save the Children is urging the UK Prime Minister David Cameron to use the Olympic hunger summit to scale up efforts to tackle the problem and to announce that addressing the hunger crisis will be the top theme of next year’s G8 in London.    Save the Children is urging the Government to:    Use the UK"s G8 presidency to keep hunger on the top of their agenda throughout 2013    Tackle immediate hunger needs across Africa where 28 million people are suffering    Set national and international targets to dramatically bring down the number of chronically malnourished children helping to galvanise political action against hunger.    Fix a broken humanitarian system where slow release of funds costs lives.    In the 2000s, says the report, the proportion of acutely malnourished children grew. Rising prices for food and fuel threaten to further exacerbate the situation.    While children also go hungry in times of famine or war, there is particular concern about the nutrition of infants and toddlers. Malnutrition in babies and small children leads to stunting and developmental delays that cannot be remedied.    Brendan Cox, director of policy at Save the Children, said there was a critical period of 1,000 days during which good nutrition sets a child up for a healthy life, and yet too little attention had been paid to their food needs.    "This has been historically a very under-resourced and under-represented area, in spite of the 1,000-day period," he said. Ensuring a small child was well nourished "is one of the most cost-effective and transformative outcomes you can have. It transforms lives."    Save the Children has high hopes for the Olympic hunger summit, which is expected to involve more than a hundred heads of state who will be in London for the Olympics.    Brendan Cox says he does not think it will be confined to the current food shortages of the sort being experienced in West Africa. "We expect it to focus down quite strongly on nutrition, given where we are – and we are going backwards on this – given the historical neglect of it. We hope it will set a forward trajectory for what will be done during the UK G8 presidency in 2013," he said.    The Child Development Index 2012: Progress, challenges and inequality.    The 2012 edition of the Child Development Index highlights the progress the world has made in reducing child mortality and ensuring millions more children go to school.    At the same time it warns of the impact of the failure to tackle child undernutrition on children’s overall well-being.    Drawing on data on stunting and wasting, it looks at the disastrous effects of the food and financial crises on children.    It makes a series of recommendations to developing-country governments and to donors on tackling hunger and undernutrition.    The Child Development Index monitors child well-being in 141 countries, aggregating data on child mortality, primary-school enrolment and underweight.    http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-library/child-development-index-2012-progress-challenges-and-inequality
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