Nearly 160 million children worldwide are stunted due to hunger. Also, every 10 seconds a child dies somewhere from hunger or its consequences.
„Every 10 seconds a child somewhere in the world dies, either from hunger or its consequences - hunger-related diseases. This equates to 3 million lives a year - a very tragic figure. As of last year, 160 million children worldwide were stunted, according to global organizations.
If a child is malnourished in the first years of life, the damage to their physical development and cognitive abilities is irreversible later in life.
At the same time, progress has been made on some nutrition-related health indicators from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, there has been a steady positive trend in breastfeeding infants up to six months of age and a decrease in the incidence of nutritional anemia in girls and women of childbearing age.
Significant progress has been made in reducing child and infant mortality: from 2000 to 2024, it has more than halved. However, in 2025, this figure - 4.8 million children not living to their fifth birthday or a child dying every six seconds – remains unacceptable, and the gap between the most developed and least developed countries is 20 times or more.