Why do most children affected by acute malnutrition go untreated?

The surging global hunger crisis is dire, especially for vulnerable children who are at heightened risk. However, there is a promising solution: treatment with a high protein peanut paste known as ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF).
This innovative intervention has demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in combating malnutrition, providing essential nutrients that help children recover and thrive. By ensuring access to RUTF, we can make significant strides in addressing the devastating impact of hunger and improving the lives of countless young individuals around the world.

More than 90 percent of malnourished children treated with RUTF recover within weeks. But this simple, effective and scalable solution is still out of reach for too many children. Historically, more than four of every five children with acute malnutrition do not receive this lifesaving treatment they need due to unnecessary, life-threatening bureaucracy and lack of sustained funding.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) treats children experiencing acute malnutrition in  21 countries. Scaling up our approach and delivering these simplified, proven solutions will save lives. Many complex global problems don’t have a simple solution, but this one does. Read on to learn more about acute malnutrition, why children aren’t receiving the treatment they need, and how we can build a world where no child dies of hunger.

What is acute malnutrition?

Children experiencing acute malnutrition are too thin for their height and as their bodies weaken from a lack of nutrition, they become more vulnerable to other diseases. They are 11 times more likely to die than healthy children.

Even if a child survives acute malnutrition, they often face long-lasting harmful effects from it. Acute malnutrition can negatively impact physical and mental development, especially in children under the age of five who are in a critical period of growth.

“This is a grim reality. The world cannot afford to stand back and watch,” says Elijah Okeyo, the IRC’s Uganda country director

What factors contribute to acute malnutrition?

In 2023, nearly 282 million people in 59 countries faced high levels of acute food insecurity, requiring urgent food and livelihood assistance.

Many countries with high rates of children experiencing acute malnutrition suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change, which has increased the severity of droughts and floods, destroying food supplies and livelihoods. The growing global hunger and malnutrition crisis is directly linked to climate change. Climate shocks damage critical infrastructure, limiting access to clean water and sanitation. In such cases, diseases can spread rapidly – often among populations of children whose immune systems are already weakened by malnutrition. 

Countries like Somalia, which endured three consecutive years of severe drought followed by flash flooding , are feeling the impacts firsthand. This continues to affect 4.3 million people who are facing crisis levels of food insecurity. The drought also decimated people’s livelihoods, especially those in the agro-pastoral sector, with over 3.5 million livestock having perished. 

Conflict is also a driver of hunger and malnutrition because of the ways it disrupts agricultural production and displaces people, leaving them without regular access to food, shelter or water. Food is sometimes weaponized during conflicts, leading to blockades or destruction of food supplies, which causes malnutrition to spike among civilians. 

This can be seen in Sudan, where more than half of the population are now facing crisis or worse levels of food insecurity, forcing families to make impossible decisions to feed their children.

“The conflict in Sudan has decimated agricultural production, restricted the transportation of food, collapsed the banking sector, undermined local markets, and created large-scale displacement, all of which are limiting people’s ability to feed themselves,” said Eatizaz Yousif, the IRC’s Country Director for Sudan. “At the same time, restrictions on humanitarian access have severely limited humanitarian actors’ ability to reach populations in need.”

In Gaza, the escalation of hostilities in late 2023 created an unprecedented food crisis with the entire population of 2.2 million people facing high levels of acute food insecurity—the highest share ever classified for any area or country. 

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