South Africa’s burden of child malnutrition remains unacceptably high for a middle-income country, placing it as an outlier among countries of similar wealth, according to the 2020 'South African Child Gauge' report, published every year by the Children's Institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT).

The report revealed that the nutritional status of South African children is deteriorating, with the Covid-19 pandemic intensifying the problem through rising unemployment and rising food prices.

“Twenty-five years since the advent of democracy, South Africa remains the most unequal country in the world. Poverty has a profoundly damaging effect on children’s care, health and development – with young children in the poorest of households three times more likely to be stunted than those in the richest 20% of households,” the report said.

The closure of schools and early childhood development programmes has also prevented children from accessing school meals.

Leader editor and director of the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Food Security Professor Julian May said that child malnutrition is a slow form of violence that goes largely unnoticed until the child’s health is seriously compromised.

“It slowly eats away at children’s potential, eroding their physical health and cognitive development and undermining their education and economic prospects – and it drives an intergenerational cycle of poverty, malnutrition and ill-health that comes at a huge cost for individual children, their families and the South African economy,” he said.

UCT Vice-Chancellor Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng explained that children who manage to survive malnutrition continue carrying the harm in their bodies, minds and spirits for the rest of their lives.

Phakeng added that by attacking children, malnutrition erodes national development.

The report showed that 30% of South African children live below the food poverty line in households with a per capita income of less than R571 a month; these households do not have enough money to meet the nutritional needs of children.

Frequent infections, caused by overcrowding and poor access to water, sanitation and health care services, further compromise children’s nutritional status.

UCT communication and education specialist at the Children’s Institute Lori Lake said there is much that individuals can do to protect and promote the country’s health and nutrition and that of children, but she said this cannot be done in isolation.

Lake explained that safeguarding children’s health and nutrition requires intervention at every stage in life and collective action from a range of government departments, civil society and the private sector.

UCT Children’s Institute director Professor Shanaaz Mathews said there is much that the State can and must do.

Addressing the double burden of malnutrition must start early, during the antenatal period and extend across the life course, she said.

First Lady of South Africa, Dr Tshepo Motsepe, who launched the event, called on all South Africans to take action: “Let us become that society that ensures that no child goes to bed hungry.”