According to the United Nation Children’s Fund UNICEF, the number of pregnant women and girls suffering from malnutrition has increased by 25% in the last two years.
In a report released by the agency, countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan, have been the most affected.
According to UNICEF, more than one billion women and adolescent girls globally are malnourished. It claims that recent crises such as conflict and Covid have made it increasingly difficult for them to obtain the food they require.
UNICEF has encouraged the international community to prioritise food security, including funding for failing nutrition programmes. It emphasised the negative effect of malnutrition on children’s health.
According to data analysis of women in most nations, the one billion undernourished women and adolescent girls were “underweight and of short stature” as a consequence.
It was also discovered that they were deficient in critical micronutrients and had anaemia. South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa “remain the epicentre of the nutrition crisis among adolescent girls and women,” according to the study.
It discovered that 68% of the women and adolescent females there were underweight, and 60% of those had anaemia.
According to UNICEF, the number of pregnant or breastfeeding women suffering from acute malnutrition in the 12 food-crisis nations rose from 5.5 to 6.9 million between 2020 and 2022. These countries are Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Chad, and Yemen.
UNICEF has called for required legal measures to expand large-scale food fortification of commonly consumed foods such as flour, cooking oil, and salt in order to help reduce micronutrient deficiencies and anaemia in girls and women.