The world is facing a serious public health problem as a result of malnutrition, a report warns. The Global Nutrition Report said every nation except China had crossed a "malnutrition red line", suffering from too much or too little nutrition. Globally, malnutrition led to "11% of GDP being squandered as a result of lives lost, less learning, and days lost to illness,"
The findings follow on from last year’s Nutrition from Growth summit in London. At the 2013 gathering, 96 signatories made "significant and public commitments to nutrition-related actions" and this report was an assessment of the work that still needed to be done and the progress made.
"Malnutrition is an invisible thing, unless it is very extreme," explained Lawrence Haddad, co-chairman of the independent expert group that compiled the report. "This invisibility stops action happening but it does not stop bad things happening to the children, " he told BBC News.
"It does not stop preventing the children’s brains from developing; it does not stop their immune systems from not developing. "It is a silent crisis and we are trying to raise the awareness of the extent of malnutrition and the damage it does." The UN World Food Programme estimates that poor nutrition causes nearly half of deaths in children aged under five – 3.1 million children each year.