WHO Report on Child Wasting: India's Child Wasting Prevalence is Very High, Intensified Focus on Prevention Needed
SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being | SDG 2: Zero Hunger | SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Institutions: Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD) | Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW)
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a brief on Child Wasting (Global nutrition targets 2030: Child wasting brief), confirming that the world is not on track to achieve the crucial global nutrition target of maintaining child wasting to less than 5% by 2025, a target set under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Wasting, defined as being too thin for one’s age, is a severe form of acute malnutrition that drastically increases a child’s risk of disease and death.
The Global Wasting Targets (2030):
SDG Target: Reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5% by 2025, and further reduce it to less than 3% by 2030.
Current Status: In 2024, an estimated 6.6% of children under five years of age were suffering from wasting globally. Low- and lower-middle-income countries account for 93% of the global burden of wasted children.
Challenge: Despite progress in some areas like stunting, wasting remains high, especially in regions like Southern and South-eastern Asia, indicating complex drivers like inadequate sanitation, food insecurity, and recurrent infections. India’s child wasting prevalence rate is documented at 17.3% among children under five years of age, which is in Very High category.
The Call for a Policy Shift:
To achieve the extended 2030 target, the brief calls for a crucial policy shift towards developing and scaling up radically improved solutions, focusing on the fundamental drivers of malnutrition. This requires a systems-based approach that strengthens and aligns:
Health systems: Ensuring appropriate antenatal care, quality primary health services, and increased coverage of treatment services for children with wasting.
Food and Social Protection Systems: Ensuring households have access to adequate food and care practices.
The finding that the world is off-track for the wasting target is particularly salient for India, as South Asia is cited as one of the regions where wasting levels continue to be critically high. For the Ministry of Women and Child Development (MWCD), the nodal agency for schemes like Mission Poshan 2.0 and the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the report provides validation for the shift toward an integrated approach that targets:
Systemic Interventions: Moving beyond mere supplementation to integrating nutrition outcomes across health, food security (through the NFSA), and water/sanitation policies.
Treatment and Early Detection: Intensifying the focus on the early detection and timely community-based management and treatment of children suffering from Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (MAM).
What is Child Wasting?→ Wasting is a condition where a child’s weight-for-height ratio is more than two standard deviations below the WHO child growth standards median. It signals recent and severe weight loss, often due to acute food shortage or illness (like diarrhea), and requires urgent treatment.
Follow the full update here: Global nutrition targets 2030: child wasting brief