7.3 Million Young Girls, Women in Nigeria Undernourished - Report

A new global report by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has raised the alarm on the need to invest in essential nutrition programmes for adolescent girls and women in Nigeria as the number of undernourished teenage girls and women of reproductive age soars to 7.3 million in three years.

The report - Undernourished and Overlooked: A Global Nutrition Crisis in Adolescent Girls and Women - issued ahead of International Women's Day - warns that the ongoing crises, aggravated by unending gender inequality, are deepening a nutrition crisis among adolescent girls and women that had already shown little improvement in the last two decades.

It placed Nigeria among the 12 hardest hit countries by the global food and nutrition crisis. The other countries, which include Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan, represent the epicenter of a global nutrition crisis that has been made worse by Covid-19 and the war in Ukraine, as well as ongoing drought, conflict, and instability in some countries.

The report calls for governments, development and humanitarian partners and donors, civil society organizations and development actors to transform food, health, and social protection systems for adolescent girls and women.