HARARE - More than a third of Zimbabwe’s children aged below five are malnourished, according to new data released by the government and the United Nations Food and Nutrition Council (FNC) on Friday.
The Zimbabwe National Nutrition Survey carried out in January 2010 revealed a worsening problem of chronic malnutrition, posing long-term survival and development challenges for the southern African country that is battling to shake off the effects of a 10-year recession and political strife.
The survey also shows plummeting exclusive breastfeeding rates. However the low and stable rates of severe acute malnutrition that were found are a credit to both the food security programmes supported by the international community as well as the coping mechanisms of the Zimbabwean people.
Over a third of Zimbabwe’s children under the age of five are chronically malnourished and consequently stunted, with short height for age.
Child height for age is often a telling predictor of human potential, diminished immune response, reduced adult size, compromised intellectual ability, lower economic productivity and poorer reproductive outcomes
“The data emerging from the survey provides irrefutable evidence of the magnitude of the problem of malnutrition in Zimbabwe. These levels of malnutrition are unacceptably high.
“They represent not only a challenge to reaching our development goals but will also constrain economic growth” said UNICEF Country Representative to ZimbabwePeter Salama said at the launch.
While the overall prevalence of severe acute malnutrition remains relatively low across the country for children under five years, at 2.1 percent, the rates double among younger children between 6-18 months old, suggesting inherent problems in infant feeding practices, including access to right foods, the survey said.
Acute malnutrition can lead to death. These rates of severe acute malnutrition translate to over 15,000 severely malnourished children that are at a very high risk of dying in Zimbabwe.
The survey also showed extremely low and deteriorating trends in exclusive breastfeeding, recorded at 5.8 percent, and considered to be one of the key underlying factors for undernutrition.
Once a net food exporter Zimbabwe has faced food shortages since President Robert Mugabe’s controversial land reform programme that he launched in 2000 and which has seen agricultural output plummet because the government failed to provide blacks resettled on former white farms with inputs and skills training to maintain production.
A unity government formed by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Mugabe last year is pushing to revive the economy although it has to date failed to ensure law and order in the mainstay agricultural sector where mobs of supporters of Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party continue harassing the few remaining white commercial farmers.

By Zimonline