In 2012, the World Health Assembly Resolution 65.6 endorsed a Comprehensive implementation plan on maternal,
infant and young child nutrition (1), which specified six global nutrition targets for 2025 (2). This policy brief covers the
sixth target: reduce and maintain childhood wasting to less than 5%. The purpose of this policy brief is to increase
attention to, investment in, and action for a set of cost-effective interventions and policies that can help Member States
and their partners to reduce and maintain the rate of childhood wasting.
Global Nutrition Targets 2025
Wasting Policy Brief
T he global target for 2025 will be achieved if highburden
countries take stock of their current
prevalence, projected population growth,
underlying causes of wasting and the resources available
to address them; set target annual reduction rates to
guide intervention efforts; mobilize necessary resources;
and develop and implement systematic plans for the
reduction of wasting. In addition, all countries need to
examine inequalities among populations and identify
priority actions for particular vulnerable or marginalized
groups, where there are clusters of large numbers of
wasting children. Such an equity-inspired approach is
both an ethical imperative and a judicious investment
strategy.
Wasting is a major health problem and, owing to its
associated risks for morbidity, requires urgent attention
from policy-makers and programme implementers alike.
Addressing wasting is of critical importance because of
the heightened risk of disease and death for children who
lose too much of their body weight. It will be difficult
to continue improving rates of child survival without
improvements in the proportion of wasted children
receiving timely and appropriate life-saving treatment,
alongside reductions in the number of children becoming
wasted in the first place (prevention).
The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies
wasting in children as severe or moderate, according
to the WHO growth reference for weight-for-height (3).
This definition does not include children with bilateral
pitting oedema – a form of acute undernutrition that
results from similar causal pathways to wasting. Wasting
is a reduction or loss of body weight in relation to
height. Acute malnutrition in children aged 6 to 59
months can be either moderate or severe. Severe acute
malnutrition is defined as severe wasting (low weightfor-
height) and/or mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC)