A Peruvian mother and her young baby. © CARE Some shocking statistics: 19 million children are currently suffering from severe acute malnutrition worldwide. And only 9 percent of them are receiving adequate treatment. However, in Peru something is changing. It has become an encouraging exception to a global tendency towards stagnated rates of child malnutrition.

After ten years of almost no change in child chronic malnutrition in the country, rates fell from 23% to 17.9% between 2005 and 2010. That means that over 130,000 children under five are now not malnourished who otherwise would have been. We are very proud that evidence has emerged that CARE and its partners, including the Peruvian government, played a critical role in this success.

According to the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), these changes would not have occurred without the formation in early 2006 of the Child Nutrition Initiative (CNI). CARE was heavily involved in creating the initiative and has continued to play a leadership role. The initiative recognised the multi-causal nature of the problem, and lobbied the government to prioritise proven tactics against child malnutrition in both resource allocation and policy. It had a great advocacy success, getting ten Presidential candidates to sign a commitment to reduce chronic malnutrition in children under five by 5 per cent in five years (‘5 by 5 by 5’). And has supported the new government to meet that commitment.

View the IDS report, "Analysing Success in the Fight against Malnutrition in Peru"

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