Malnutrition kills 6 million

Malnutrition contributes to more than half of child deaths worldwide, leaving millions of survivors crippled, vulnerable to illness and mentally disabled, Unicef said in a report released yesterday. Half the children in south Asia suffer from malnutrition, as well as a third of children in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the organisation's annual "State of the World's Children" report.

The report said that malnutrition played a role in 55 per cent of the nearly 12 million deaths each year of children under five in developing countries.