Child Wasting Must Be National Priority

Across South Asia, children still arrive at hospitals too weak to cry, some reduced to skin and bone, others swollen with nutritional oedema. Behind each child is often a family that has travelled far for care, only to learn that the child has severe acute malnutrition (SAM), medically termed as severe wasting, the deadliest form of childhood undernutrition. Unlike epidemics that command headlines, severe wasting advances quietly through homes and communities, weakening immunity, worsening common infections and threatening survival and development.