Child Malnutrition a 'Disaster' - South African Rights Report

The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) says that malnutrition in the Eastern Cape province should be declared a disaster in terms of the Disaster Management Act. SAHRC also called on the government to intervene, following an investigation into the state of food security in the province.

The report found that 120 children died of malnutrition between 2021 and 2022 while an additional 1,000 children were diagnosed with severe malnutrition. Eileen Carter, the head of the SAHRC in the Eastern Cape said: "We suspect that the number in fact is much higher ... When you present with severe acute malnutrition, that's a very end state of malnutrition. The kids who are still at home and presenting with this might succumb to other causes."

The findings come in the same year when UNICEF found 573,000 children under the age of five suffer, or are at risk of malnurition in Malawi, and that child malnutrition in Nigeria is a "ticking time bomb" with rates escalating up from 1.74 million from 2022.

This article originally appeared on AllAfrica

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