SOMALIA: “Highest levels of malnutrition in the world”

NAIROBI Friday, December 05, 2008 (IRIN) - “Somalia has the highest levels of malnutrition in the world”, with up to 300,000 children acutely malnourished annually, Hilde Frarfjord Johnson, UNICEF's deputy executive director, said. Anaemic mothers and inadequate nutrition were the main causes of high malnutrition levels in the war-torn country, she said, with most cases in south-central Somalia. Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) rates of more than 20 percent have been reported, with the figure...