Nearly six million children a year dying of malnutrition

HUNGER and malnutrition kill nearly six million children a year, and more people are malnourished in sub-Saharan Africa this decade than in the 1990s, according to a UN report released yesterday.

Many of the children die from treatable diseases, including diarrhoea, pneumonia, malaria and measles, said the report by the Rome-based UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of malnourished people grew to 203.5m in 2000-02 from 170.4m 10 years earlier, the report states, noting that hunger and malnutrition are among the main causes of poverty, illiteracy, disease and deaths in developing countries.