The statistics are clear and shocking: More than 400 million children around the world are not receiving enough nutrients to grow and thrive.
And more serious still, nearly half of those may experience stunting, which means they cannot grow to their full physical and mental potential because of malnutrition, according to a new report by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
“When you've suffered from stunting or wasting, the body and brain will never fully recover to what would have been its full potential. … It now contributes to 50 per cent of the remaining preventable deaths of children under the age of five,” the foundation's chief executive Mark Suzman told The National.
“And for those who do survive, they're a lot less resilient. They have fewer years of schooling, they do less well in school, they're less likely to be employed, they’re more likely to be in poverty.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is determined to combat childhood malnutrition around the world. Based in Seattle and launched in 2000, it is a global leader in fighting poverty, disease and inequality around the world. In 2024, it had an operating budget of $8.6 billion.
The foundation's annual Goalkeepers report, released on Tuesday, outlined a series of relatively simple and affordable solutions.
Milk is an incredible source of nutrition for children. According to the foundation, increasing milk production by just a factor of two or three in low and middle-income countries could have a profound impact.
Another solution is adding extra ingredients to household staples like bouillon cubes. In Ethiopia, it's already having an impact. According to the report, a new process of fortifying salt with iodine and folic acid led to a “four per cent reduction in anaemia and preventing 73 per cent of all deaths and stillbirths due to neural tube defects.”
In a country such as Nigeria, it could help avert “half of all deaths and stillbirths from neural tube defects”.
While the solutions are simple, there has been a dramatic reduction in funding and progress in combating global health issues since the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Our message is that there has not been as much global progress as the world could and should have seen across most of our indications, and especially in the area we care most about, which is global health,” Mr Suzman said.
The chief executive said progressive had essentially stalled and that it appeared to be “much more than a Covid hangover”.
Most frustrating for the foundation is that the solutions exist to combat many of the world’s challenges.
“This really shouldn't be happening because the world has the tools and resources to actually change and address that,” Mr Suzman lamented.
In 2015, the UN adopted a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that included several interconnected objectives, designed to create a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet”.
As time marches forward and the 2030 deadline to meet the goals looms, it’s becoming less and less likely that the international community will be able to achieve the original objectives.
“There's no getting around that,” Mr Suzman said. “If you look at those charts and the trajectory of those charts, the vast majority of SDGs, and particularly the 18 SDG indicators that we prioritise as targets, as they're the ones we track, the world is well off track now to meet that as goals.”
As hope to meet the SDGs by 2030 fades, Mr Suzman and the foundation are determined to continue advocating and rallying on behalf of those who are most affected by the lack of progress and believe that even without achieving the 2030 target “you can have a very different trajectory over the succeeding decade” with sufficient effort and funding on a host of critical issues plaguing the world.
