Malnutrition (2024)

A brief guide to malnutrition and its impact globally and in Bangladesh.

Globally…

• Malnutrition — including obesity, overweight, and underweight — affects more than2 billion peoplein the world.¹
• 45% of deaths of childrenunder five yearsof ageare linked to under-nutrition.
• In 2020,around 150 million childrenunder five years of age worldwide were affected bystunting.²
• In 2019, vitamin Adeficiency and zinc deficiency caused around 23,800 deaths³ and 2810 deaths⁴ of children under five years of age, respectively.

In Bangladesh…

• 35% of the populationremains food insecure.⁵
• Severe acute malnutrition affects 600,000 children.⁶
• Anaemia affects43% of children from six months to five years of age.⁷
• 28% of childrenunder fiveyears ofa*ge arestunted.⁵
• 10 % of childrenunder fiveyears ofa*ge arewasted.
• 23% of children under five years ofa*ge areunderweight.
• A third of ever-married women areunderweight andaround 13% have short stature, which increases the risk of difficult childbirth and low-birth-weight infants.⁸
• Around half of all women suffer fromanaemia, mostly nutritional in origin.⁹
• Malnutrition is estimated to cost Bangladesh more thanUS$1bnevery year in lost productivity.¹⁰

Definitions…

Stunting: abnormally low height-for-age.
Wasting: abnormally low weight-for-height.
Underweight: abnormally low weight-for-age.

Sources

1. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malnutrition

2. https://data.unicef.org/topic/nutrition/malnutrition/

3. https://www.healthdata.org/results/gbd_summaries/2019/vitamin-a-deficiency-level-3-risk

4. https://www.healthdata.org/results/gbd_summaries/2019/zinc-deficiency-level-3-risk

5. https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/Copy_of_tagged_Bangladesh-Nutrition-Profile.pdf

6. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/156482651403500214

7. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.ANM.CHLD.ZS?locations=BD

8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8262449/

9. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(22)00084-5/fulltext

10. https://www.wfp.org/publications/food-and-nutrition-security-bangladesh