Malnutrition contributes to more than half of child deaths worldwide, leaving millions of survivors crippled, vulnerable to illness and mentally disabled, UNICEF said yesterday.
The United Nations Children's Fund, in its annual report entitled "The State of the World's Children", said the problem of under-nourishment was all the more dangerous because it often had no visible symptoms.
The 127-page report said 75 per cent of the children who die worldwide of malnutrition-related causes betrayed no outward sign of problems. Malnutrition played a role in 55 per cent of the nearly 12 million deaths each year of children under five in developing countries, the report said.
"Malnutrition not only kills, but more terrible in terms of numbers is that it maims in many ways," the UNICEF executive director, Ms Carol Bellamy, said. "It stunts growth, holds down the ability of children to learn, it reduces the capacity to fully experience one's potential," she said.
Although major progress has been made in reducing child malnutrition in some parts of the world, including East Asia and Latin America, the overall number of malnourished children has grown worldwide, the report said.
Half of South Asia's children under five are undernourished, while one in every three children in sub-Saharan Africa are underweight, and the situation in several African countries is getting worse.
The report noted inadequate care for children as well as discrimination against women and girls as some of the underlying causes of malnutrition.
"The very high rates of child malnutrition and low birth-weight throughout much of South Asia are linked to factors such as women's poor access to education and their low levels of participation in paid employment, compared with other regions," it said.
In Central and Eastern Europe, the transition to market economies and cutbacks in state-funded social programmes were having a severe effect on the most vulnerable.
"In the Russian Federation, for example, the prevalence of stunting among children under two years of age increased from 9 per cent in 1992 to 15 per cent in 1994," the report said.
Ms Bellamy said the report, written up each year around a different topic, was "a call to action".