World failing to roll back childhood malnutrition: UNICEF (AFP)

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - The world has failed to roll back childhood malnutrition, with more than 25 percent of children under age five in poor countries underweight, a United Nations Children's Fund ( UNICEF) report said.

Despite progress in some countries, it said, averages for underweight children in the developing world have fallen just five percentage points in the past 15 years.

And 27 percent of Third World children -- around 146 million -- are underweight, the study said.

"The lack of progress to combat undernutrition is damaging children and nations," UNICEF Executive Director Ann Veneman said as she introduced the report, titled "Progress for Children: A Report Card on Nutrition."

"Few things have more impact than nutrition on a child's ability to survive, learn effectively and escape a life of poverty," she added.

The report found that nearly 75 percent of the world's underweight children live in just 10 countries, with South Asia the worst-performing region. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan are home to more than half of them.

The problem in that part of the world was blamed mainly on poor food quality and safety, women's low social status, early marriage leading to low birth weights and poor sanitation causing energy-draining diarrhoeal diseases.

The success story is China, which managed to cut underweight prevalence rates from 19 percent in 1990 to eight percent in 2002.

At the same time, China's child mortality rates have also dropped from 49 per 1,000 births to 31 per 1,000 during the period.

In Africa, more than 25 percent of all children under five are underweight for their age, particularly in famine-prone eastern and southern Africa.

West and central Africa witnessed a slight improvement over the past 15 years, from 32 percent to 28 percent, coupled with a rise in breastfeeding rates.

In the Middle East and North Africa, undernutrition rates in countries such as Iraq, Sudan and Yemen have been getting worse since 1990.

Latin America and the Caribbean region performed well, with underweight rates of just seven percent between 1990 and 2004.

The report also noted that in the industrialized world, undernutrition still exists among minority groups and obesity has become a major public health issue.