Preventing Acute Malnutrition in Young Children: Improving the Evidence for Current and Future Practice

Acute malnutrition (wasting and/or kwashiorkor) is a major global public health problem. Over 52 million children worldwide have wasting. 875,000 deaths per year in children aged 1–59 months are attributable to wasting; of those, 516,000 are attributable to severe wasting [1]. The need to act is clear, but the evidence base is sparse [2,3]. Evidence is particularly lacking for prevention of acute malnutrition [4]. Therefore, the study by Langendorf and colleagues in this week’s issue of PLOS Medicine exploring the effectiveness of different strategies to prevent malnutrition in young children is both timely and important [5].