STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Malnutrition among Iraq (news - web sites)'s youngest children has nearly doubled since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq despite U.N. efforts to deliver food to the war-ravaged country, a Norwegian research group said Monday.
Since the March 2003 invasion, malnutrition among children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years old has grown from 4 percent to 7.7 percent, said Jon Pedersen, deputy managing director of the Oslo, Norway-based Fafo Institute for Applied Social Science, which conducted the survey.
The U.N. Development Program and Iraq's Central office for Statistics and Information Technology also took part in the survey.
"It's in the level of some African countries," Pedersen told The Associated Press. "Of course, no child should be malnourished, but when we're getting to levels of 7 to 8 percent, it's a clear sign of concern."
Figures from different countries are hard to compare, said Caroline Hurford, a U.N. World Food Program spokeswoman in Rome, noting that surveys may be out of date or apply different sampling methods.
A UNICEF (news - web sites) survey of Middle Eastern and North African states in 2003 found 7 million children suffering from malnutrition.
Before the invasion, the level of malnutrition among children in Iraq was about 4 percent.
The latest study of 22,000 Iraqi homes in April and May suggests some 400,000 children are suffering from malnutrition. The results were confirmed by Iraqi interim government officials involved in the study, although the official figures are contained in a UNDP report, which has yet to be released.
Calls by the AP to the UNDP and to UNICEF in Geneva were not immediately returned.
Before the war, the U.N. oil-for-food program was credited with nearly doubling the Iraqi population's annual food intake and reducing by half malnutrition levels among children. However, Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government also used it to illegally siphon off billions of dollars in illegal revenue by exploiting U.N. sanctions against Iraq.
The oil-for-food program lasted seven years before it was taken over in December 2003 by the U.S.-led coalition, which operated it through June 2004.
Since Saddam's ouster, the U.S.-led coalition has faced a growing insurgency which led to problems getting adequate supplies of food into hot spots, particularly in and around Sunni areas to the north and west of Baghdad.
In September, the Rome-based WFP reported that some 6.5 million Iraqis remained dependent upon food rations, a lifeline that has been increasingly threatened by the lack of security.
Earlier this month, the U.N. agency said its distribution of 1.6 million tons of food was completed, but noted some shortages, although it didn't say of what and where.
The WFP followed up with a one-year, $60 million emergency food distribution operation aimed at providing 74,000 tons of food specifically for 220,000 malnourished children and more than 1.7 million primary school children.
Pedersen noted that the malnutrition levels were different throughout Iraq, with the most severe being in the southwest portion of the country, while the northern reaches, which are Kurdish-controlled, had little malnutrition.
"It's clear that some parts of the country like Sulaimaniyah in the north have very little," he said. "And that is easily explainable in that it was outside of the Hussein regime, was supported by a lot of international NGOs and has been largely unaffected by the current unrest."
Regardless of the unrest that has gripped the country, Pedersen said the findings were still puzzling.
"Given the fact that World Food Program has distributed a lot of food, it's quite clear that one could expect some malnutrition, but the level that there is, it's a bit difficult to explain."
Facebook
Twitter