90 percent of children in Gaza lack food necessary for healthy growth - UNICEF

The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) said that 9 out of 10 children in Gaza cannot consume nutrients from sufficient food groups to ensure their healthy growth and development."In the Gaza Strip, months of hostilities and restrictions on humanitarian aid have collapsed the food and health systems, resulting in catastrophic consequences for children and their families," UNICEF said in a statement Thursday.It said that five sets of data collected between December 2023 and April 2024 has found that 9 out of 10 children in the Gaza Strip, which has been subjected to Israeli shelling since last October, suffer from severe food poverty, meaning that they are surviving on two or fewer food groups per day.In order to meet the minimum level of dietary diversity for healthy development, children must consume foods from at least five of eight food groups determined by the dietary diversity score used by UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO).These include breastfeeding, eggs, dairy products, meat, poultry, and fish among other groups.UNICEF said that 27 percent of children globally suffer from severe nutritional poverty in early childhood, which amounts to 181 million children under the age of five.