If the world meets the global nutrition targets, 3.7 million child lives could be saved, at least 65 million fewer children would be stunted, 265 million fewer women would suffer from anemia, and 91 million children would be treated for severe wasting. Achieving these results would require an average annual investment of $7 billion over the next 10 years to scale-up a package of high-impact nutrition interventions. On top of this, improvements in the enabling environment are necessary. Achieving the targets is within reach if all partners work together to immediately scale-up investments in nutrition.
Stunting, wasting, anemia, and non-exclusive breastfeeding are common indicators of malnutrition. In this chart, stunting and wasting are shown as a percentage of children under 5, anemia as a percentage of women of reproductive age, and non-exclusive breastfeeding as a percentage of infants in their first 6 months.
Achieving the WHA targets will cost $3 billion over 10 years, on top of current investments. However, if current investments continue under Business as Usual, the targets will not be achieved. Achieving the targets is within reach if all partners work together to immediately scale-up investments in nutrition under Global Solidarity.
Note that because some interventions contribute to more than one target, the cost of meeting all four targets is less than the sum of meeting all four targets individually.
In a resource-constrained setting, priority should be given to a narrower package including the most cost-effective interventions that have high technical efficiency and can be scaled-up immediately.
Scaling up this priority package would cost less than scaling up a package of all interventions needed reach the WHA targets. However, the targets would not be achieved under this low-cost scale-up scenario.
Under a Business as Usual scenario—where current funding for nutrition grows based on economic growth but nutrition prioritization remains unchanged—there will be a substantial funding gap and the targets will not be achieved. Mobilizing the resources needed to accelerate progress against malnutrition will require that donors, countries, innovative financing mechanisms, businesses, and consumers act in solidarity.
In the Global Solidarity scenario—where nutrition commitments are made and all additional resources are mobilized through coordinated global effort—donor spending scales up rapidly during the next five years, while domestic spending steadily grows. Then, from 2020 to 2025, domestic financing accelerates, and donors begin to scale back in support of country ownership over nutrition programming.
*Current spending is maintained across the ten year period. Annual figures represent total contributions by source, including projected levels of current spending as well as additional financing needs to scale-up the interventions. Figures do not include costs to scale-up IPTp (total cost = $0.5 B), as it is currently being funded by sources outside of nutrition, including the President’s Malaria Initiative, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and to some extent country governments.
If [region] and others worldwide do their part, the results could be tremendous: 3.7 million child lives saved, at least 65 million fewer stunted children, 265 million fewer women suffering from anemia than in 2015, and 91 million children treated for severe wasting. In a resource-constrained environment, the smaller package of priority interventions could save about 2.2 million lives, and-together with anticipated progress in food availability and diversity, women's health and education, and investments in water and sanitation-could result in 50 million fewer children stunted in 2025 compared to 2015. It would also result in 91 million children treated for severe wasting.