About 90 percent of children in Gaza are suffering from malnutrition and facing “severe” threats to their “survival, growth and development,” according to a report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) on Thursday, June 6.
The report, titled Child Food Poverty: Nutrition Deprivation in Early Childhood, analyzed food poverty among young children in 100 countries. It also warned that more than one in four children under the age of five live in “severe” food poverty, with over 180 million children at risk of adverse impacts on their growth and development.
Published on Thursday, the UNICEF report exposed the “catastrophic impact” of Israel’s offensive on Gaza. The conflict has led to the “collapse” of food and health systems, with findings showing that one in ten children subsisted on “two or fewer food groups per day” from December last year to April this year.
Highlighting “an appalling escalation in nutrition deprivation,” the report also revealed that 65 percent of children were fed diets with “only one or no food groups” in February, a sixfold increase since the first half of December last year.
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