⁍ An extra 10,000 children per month may die this year from malnutrition due to the COVID-19 crisis, the head of the World Health Organisation warned on Wednesday.

---

⁍ Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a U.N Food and Agriculture (FAO) conference that due to the pandemic he expected a 14% rise in cases of severe child malnutrition this year.

---

– World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he’s expecting an extra 10,000 children per month to die from malnutrition this year, mostly in Africa and south Asia, Reuters reports. According to the BBC, the WHO director-general says severe child malnutrition rose 14% in 2016 and is expected to rise another 14% this year. “We cannot accept a world where the rich have access to healthy diets while the poor are left behind,” Ghebreyesus says. “The rich can afford to stay home, the poor must go out to work.” Ghebreyesus says COVID-19, a pandemic caused by over-consumption of unhealthy foods, has caused “serious disruptions to essential services, immunisation, maternal services, child nutrition, family planning, and more.” He says governments need to work with the private sector to improve food systems and end subsidies for producers of unhealthy foods. “Millions of lives could be saved if countries expanded childhood feeding programs, reduced marketing of unhealthy foods, and used fiscal policies to drive better food choices amongst consumers,” the BBC quotes Ghebreyesus as saying.