By Usman Khan

Nepal is in dire need of scarcity of food and Nutrition and needs immediate measures of intervention are needed to avoid further deterioration of the situation. Many children are suffering from a severe form of malnutrition. As they are not getting a sufficient diet or have other serious health issues. The Issues of malnutrition are not new in the Chepang community of Dhading and Chitwan, and some districts of the Karnali Province of Nepal.
A recent report on hunger also shows a miserable picture of Nepal’s hunger level. The country ranks 81st out of 121 countries in the 2022 Global Hunger Index, with a score of 19.1, which shows that the country is on the verge of serious levels of hunger. A GHI score of less than 10 is considered a low hunger level, a score between 10 and 19.9 is moderate, 20 to 34.9 is serious, 35 to 49.9 is alarming, and over 50 is extremely alarming.
Many people in the country have not been receiving adequate nutritious food. According to the hunger report by the Concern Worldwide of Ireland Welthungerhilfe’s inadequate food supply, is leading to undernourishment problems, and child under-nutrition which is also affecting the child mortality rate.
According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS 2019). The report showed that 12 percent of children under five suffer from wasting, which is the major gauge for mapping GHI scores. According to the Nepal Demographic Health Survey 201, only 10 percent of children under five were suffering from waste. Low weight for a particular height is an under-nutrition condition, which is a strong forecaster of mortality among children under five. According to the UN health agency, wasting in children is related to a higher risk of death if not cured appropriately.
There are manifold factors including the Covid-19 pandemic, which rendered thousands of people unemployed, growing inflation triggered by the protracted Ukraine-Russia war, and climate change are to blame for the deterioration of the problems. As politicians both in the government and the opposition are busy in election campaigns, they have no time to address these issues, growing the situation more badly.
Many people in the Tarai region, who used to sell spare grains, have been forced to buy foodstuff due to extreme weather events dry spells in monsoon and flooding at the time of reap. Of late, unseasonal extreme rainfall becomes the reason thousands of people face the risk of hunger.
Around 18 percent of children under five years of age were found to be affected by waste against the 12 percent national average. Nutrition has a direct link with the general development of the country. Malnutrition affects the physical as well as mental growth of children, which eventually affects the country’s financial health, according to them. Immediate intervention measures are needed to address the existing problems of nutrition.
Problems will escalate if Nepal fails to address the problems at the earliest. Nepal’s government should not forget that problems now are not limited to any particular area but are happening many places in the country. It should be conceded that a high prevalence of wasting means children of the said age group are not getting enough nutritious foods and poor water and sanitation conditions and other factors are also responsible for the problems.
Malnutrition is not only a problem of not getting enough to eat but also of the lack of nutritious food, of lack of knowledge to use locally available food and growing junk food consumption among children. Nepal also has an international obligation to improve the condition of malnourished children. The country needs to reduce stunting in order to meet the United Nations-backed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets, wasting to 4 percent from the current 12 percent, underweight to 10 percent from the existing 27 percent and anemia to 10 percent from over 52 percent in 2016.
Nepal should be committed to meeting the goals of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aimed at ending poverty and hunger and all forms of inequality in the world, and UNICEF already warned in January that Nepal’s significant progress in the nutrition of mothers and children are at risk due to current inequalities and the pandemic.
That’s why the UNICEF suggested a multisystem approach involving food, health, water and sanitation, education, and social protection systems to improve the health of Nepali children. Nepal’s government needs to improve the children’s health by access to safe nutritious, affordable, and sustainable diets throughout childhood, puberty, and years of childbearing to Progress toward the SDG targets on stunting.