Monitoring Desk
UNITED NATIONS: The number of pregnant girls and women who are suffering from malnutrition has soared by 25 percent in the last two years, the United Nations (UN) children’s agency Unicef has said.
According to BBC News, the world’s poorest regions, such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and Afghanistan, have been most affected, its report suggests. Unicef figures that more than one billion women and adolescent girls globally are malnourished.
It said the recent crises, including war and Covid-19, have made it rising hard for them to get the food they need.
UNICEF
Unicef has urged the world community to make food security the priority. It stressed the hit malnutrition is having on children’s health.
The Unicef report found that one billion undernourished adolescent girls and women were “underweight and of short stature” as a result, according to data analysis of women in most nations in the world.
It found that they suffered from a deficiency in essential micronutrients and from anemia.
South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa “remain the epicenter of the nutrition issues among adolescent girls and women,” the report said.
It found that 68 percent of women and adolescent girls there were underweight, and 60 percent of those suffering from anemia.
