UNICEF has warned that a series of global financial, geopolitical and supply chain shocks are making the challenges of getting food to at-risk children nearly insurmountable.

“The world is rapidly becoming a virtual tinderbox of preventable child deaths and child suffering from wasting,’’ UNICEF executive director Catherine Russell said on Tuesday.

A report ‘Severe wasting: An overlooked child survival emergency’ released by the agency focused on the risks of severe wasting, in which children were too thin for their height, resulting in weakened immune systems.

“Even before the war in Ukraine placed a strain on food security worldwide, conflict, climate shocks and COVID-19 were already wreaking havoc on families’ ability to feed their children,” said Ms Russell. “The world is rapidly becoming a virtual tinderbox of preventable child deaths and child suffering from wasting.”

According to the report, 13.6 million children aged five and under suffer from the problem.

The reports said supplying children with the food they needed was already a problem as the year started due to lingering disruptions to supply chains resulting from coronavirus-induced shutdowns of factories and ports.

It further stated that 10 million children suffering from severely wasting did not have access to the kind of food they best need to get on the path back to health.

Now, the war in Ukraine, coupled with lingering pandemic problems and droughts in some countries, could worsen the problem.

“A 16 per cent price increase may sound manageable in the context of global food markets, but at the end of that supply chain is a desperately malnourished child, for whom the stakes are not manageable at all,’’  Ms Russell said. 

(dpa/NAN)