On December 18, 2008 Medecins Sans Fronteirs (Doctors without Borders) released a seminal report entitled Starved for Attention: Wake Up to the Crisis of Malnutrition.
This important report provides a shocking overview of the extent of global malnutrition.
Malnutrition is the underlying cause of death for between three and five million children under five every year. Images of starving children in emergency settings are part of the public conscious, but the reality is that the vast majority of children suffering from malnutrition do so in silence, far away from the public eye.
What is Medecins San Frontier calling for?
- Treatment of severe acute malnutrition with therapeutic RUFs must be scaled up.
- Countries must develop protocols that support community-based management of severe acute malnutrition. Countries must adopt and implement the new WHO Growth Standards.Funding schemes must be developed to support Ministries of Health to integrate treatment of severe acute malnutrition into their protocols and to purchase therapeutic RUFs at a price that will not break budgets.
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Donors need to review the quality of food aid addressed towards rapidly growing young children to ensure that distributions include foods that meet their specific nutritional needs.
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Academic and operational research must increase in order to drive the developmentof new complementary and supplementary foods and programme strategies aimed atmeeting nutritional needs of young children, women of reproductive age and peoplewith tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.