Recent aid cuts mean there is a global shortage of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food, which is used to treat severe malnutrition, putting at risk the lives of millions of children. Read this blog to learn about the power of peanut paste and how you can help us reach more children with this lifesaving treatment.
Peanuts can save a child’s life. (Seriously.)
In 2024, 35 children were born into hunger every minute. Yes. Every. Minute. That’s over 18.2 million children globally born into food insecurity.
From Gaza to Ukraine, Haiti to Sudan, and the DRC—children are struggling just to eat. And it gets worse...
- 1 in 5 deaths among children under age 5 is due to severe acute malnutrition.
- Recent aid cuts have caused a shortage of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF)—a critical treatment for malnutrition that saves lives.
RECENT CUTS TO FOREIGN AID ARE PUTTING MILLIONS OF CHILDREN IN LIFE-THREATENING SITUATIONS. your support is needed more than ever.
What happens to children if they don’t get enough nutritious food?
Making sure children have enough nutritious food to eat is vital to prevent long-term damage due to malnutrition. Hunger is the body’s way of signalling that it is running short of food and needs something to eat.
Sustained hunger can lead to undernutrition, which is the outcome of insufficient food intake and repeated infectious diseases. Undernutrition includes being too short for one’s age (stunted), dangerously thin for one’s height (wasted), and deficient in vitamins and minerals (micronutrient malnutrition).
Stunting is the failure to grow physically and cognitively and is the result of chronic malnutrition. The effects of stunting often last a lifetime. Whilst wasting is the result of sudden or acute malnutrition, where the child is not getting enough calories from food and faces an immediate risk of death.
What is SEVERE ACUTE malnutrition?
Severe acute malnutrition (S.A.M), also known as severe wasting, is the most extreme and visible form of undernutrition − especially for children under five. It can impede mental and physical development, weaken their immune systems and turn childhood illnesses into killer diseases.
Severe acute malnutrition is when your muscles begin to waste away, your vision blurs, your immune system becomes dangerously weak and eventually your organs shut down. Without treatment, it can be deadly.
What’s in Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food?
Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food is a special paste, high in micronutrients, that has the power to boost children’s strength when they’ve been weakened by malnutrition – and gives children and their families hope for tomorrow. Just one 500-calorie sachet can bring a child back from the brink.
Over the past 30 years this special paste has saved the lives of millions of children facing acute malnutrition.
Theraputic peanut paste, used to treat children with S.A.M, at a hospital in Puntland, Somalia Mustafa Saeed / Save the Children
HOW therapeutic peanut paste HAS BEEN SAVING children'S LIVES globally
AFGHANISTAN
Parsto*, 11 months old, has been receiving treatment for malnutrition at a Save the Children mobile clinic. The peanut paste will provide the essential vitamins, minerals and calories to help her survive and recover.
Parsto*, from Afghanistan, is severely malnourished and is being treated with therapeutic peanut paste, which provides malnourished children with essential vitamins, minerals, and calories to help them survive and recover. Sacha Myers / Save the Children
KENYA
Ereng, 18 months old, has just recovered from malnutrition, thanks to the fortified peanut paste she has been given as part of her treatment. Over a couple of months, Ereng put on a life-saving 2.4kg.
Ereng, 18 months, loves eating the fortified peanut paste she has been given by Community Health Promoter Charles as part of her malnutrition treatment. Sam Vox / Save the Children
Somalia
Ubah, 4, us suffering from severe acute malnutrition, made worse by a heart condition she was born with. Her mother took her to a local hospital for treatment, and within 24 hours, she was doing better thanks to the peanut paste.
Ubah*, four, eating theraputic peanut paste as a treatment for SAM, at a hospital in Puntland, Somalia Mustafa Saeed / Save the Children
Yemen
Amir, 14 months old, was diagnosed with severe acute malnutrition. Now, after 7 months of treatment and therapeutic peanut paste, Amir is doing much better. Amir's mother, Fatima, says she can see real changes in ger son - he is standing up and loves listening to music!
Amir*, 14 months with is mother Fatima*, 20, at hospital in Yemen after recovering from malnutrition. Save the Children/Hadil Saeed
The Impact of the Foreign Aid Cuts
At a time when global hunger is skyrocketing and approximately 16 million children under five are facing severe, potentially fatal, malnutrition each year, the funding for this nutrition support — the funding that could save their lives — has been cut.
Recent aid cuts mean there is a global shortage of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food, which is used to treat severe malnutrition.
This means that these essential nutrition packs are not reaching the children who desperately need them. The gaps in current global supply mean only 40% of children will receive this lifesaving intervention in 2025, leaving millions at risk.
Without treatment, severe malnutrition kills. 1 in 5 deaths of children under the age of five is due to severe malnutrition - making it one of the top threats to child survival globally.
What is the solution?
Community-based treatment programmes combining medical treatment and RUTF have a 90% success rate in treating severe acute malnutrition - so it’s one of the most powerful tools we have!
Hunger is not a lost cause. Malnutrition is treatable and preventable. At Save the Children, we’ve been fighting for children’s health and survival for over 100 years. We’re not stopping now.
We’re working around the clock to ensure health clinics keep running, food and medicine is available when children arrive and that no child is turned away when they need help most.
We have the expertise and the track record to reach children around the world but what we urgently need now is the funding to ensure children can receive life-saving treatment.
Without it, we’re looking at a crisis on an unimaginable scale. And the worst part? It’s entirely preventable.
THIS IS WERE YOU COME IN.
How can you help?
We are urgently trying to raise $7 million to provide 110,000 severely malnourished children with lifesaving treatment.
$7 million would mean around 110,000 boxes of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food could be supplied to children facing severe hunger in 10 countries that are facing the worst impacts of funding shortages (Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Yemen).
For just $67, you could supply a hungry child with a 6-week course of lifesaving peanut paste treatment.
Six weeks of treatment brings a child back from critical danger, giving them the strength to take in diverse, nutritious, locally available foods. It gives a child the chance to regain their health and restart their childhood.
For $300, you could provide a child with not just 6 weeks of nutrition supplies, but also the services to support that child to fully recover – including immunisations, water and hygiene, and support to their parent or carer.
Please give what you can to the Children’s Emergency Fund to help us support children in crisis. Because every child deserves a chance of a happy, healthy childhood and future.
