Introduction
Over 45.4 million infants and children under 5 years of age experience wasting each year. The risk of wasting and nutritional oedema in infants and children, particularly in high-risk contexts where health and socioeconomic indicators are at their poorest, is heightened by ongoing crises including climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and conflict. There have therefore been major challenges along the road to achieving global targets for wasting and nutritional oedema including Sustainable Development Goal 2 to reach “Zero Hunger” by 2030.
In 2019, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General released the Global Action Plan for Child Wasting in order to establish a common focus for governments, UN agencies and civil society organizations and guide individual and collective action to accelerate progress towards targets for wasting. One of the key commitments of World Health Organization (WHO) to this action plan was to update the normative guidance on the prevention and management of wasting and/or nutritional oedema, also known as acute malnutrition.
Scope
This new 2023 WHO guideline includes recommendations and good practice statements informed by the best available evidence for the prevention and management of wasting and nutritional oedema. It includes four areas of focus, including infants less than 6 months of age at risk of poor growth and development, moderate wasting in infants and children 6-59 months of age, severe wasting and nutritional oedema in infants and children 6-59 months of age, and prevention of wasting and nutritional oedema from a child health perspective.
