Author: Tanya Khara and Susan Thurstans

In our latest blog, we ask if the nutrition community are shifting their approach towards targeting wasting treatment to children under 2 years old only ?

In 2020 it was estimated that 45 million children around the world were wasted¹. Only 11 million were reportedly reached with treatment in 2019 (UN 2023).  Increased international attention to the issue of wasting, recognises the need to accelerate progress on treatment (UN 2023, USAID 2022). However, given competing needs in the world of malnutrition, optimising efforts, focussing treatment on the most at risk children, and answering questions of what effective prevention looks like are all increasingly essential.