KATHMANDU, June 11: Malnutrition is a major risk to lives of a big chunk of population living in South Asia, warned experts at a training workshop arranged by the World Bank for a select group of regional journalists on Sunday.

Nutrition experts from the World Bank described malnutrition as one of the key issues hampering economic development. They said that malnourished people are a liability needing immediate and direct government interventions to ensure means to take balanced diet and access to health facilities.

They felt that pitiable situation of high mortality and low life expectancy in South Asian region, particularly in India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, reflected lack of commitment of political leaderships to address this key issue by diverting reasonable funds for human development to capitalise on the growth potential of this region.

Malnourishment stems from prevalent high incidence of poverty, the developing world has so far been unable to break out of this vicious trap.

Tehseen Sayieed, World Bank Country Head of Nepal, in her opening speech stressed on multilateral partnership to fight poverty in the South Asian region having 82 million malnourished children, which is twice of the Sub-Saharan Africa.

“Malnutrition is a silent killer which is depriving the region of two to three per cent GDP growth,” Tehseen added.

Nkosinath Mbuya Senior Nutrition Specialist, Human Development Unit, World Bank, shared some alarming statistics and suggested possible policy tools to deal with the malnutrition issue.

He explained to participants various variants of malnutrition and gave detailed account of pregnancy-related issues confronting women of the region for lack of awareness and offered some useful tips and steps which can help expecting mothers to give birth to a healthy child.