Chapter 2 Sustainable Development Goal 2.2: Malnutrition

Key messages
  • Nearly 23 percent of children in the region are still stunted. Ten countries in the region have a “very high prevalence” of stunting according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria (>30 percent), while another eight are considered to have a “high prevalence” of stunting (20–30 percent). The share of children under five years of age affected by wasting in Asia and the Pacific was 9.9 percent in 2020, higher than the global average of 6.7 percent.
  • The overall percentage of overweight children in the region is lower than the global average of 5.7 percent, but the percentage increased from 4.2 percent to 5 percent between 2000 and 2020.
  • The prevalence of anaemia in women of reproductive age in Asia and the Pacific was 32.9 percent in 2019. This is approximately 1 percentage point lower than it was in 2000, indicating very slow progress during the past two decades.