UNICEF has said the wider pressure on food security, worsening climate change and the price hike could lead to "catastrophic" levels of severe malnutrition.

It said soaring food prices driven by the war in Ukraine and pandemic-fuelled budget cuts set to drive up both need for and cost of life-saving therapeutic food treatment, the latter by up to 16 percent.

Released on Tuesday, ‘Severe wasting: An overlooked child survival emergency’ shows that in spite of rising levels of severe wasting in children and rising costs for life-saving treatment, global financing to save the lives of children suffering from wasting is also under threat.

“Even before the war in Ukraine placed a strain on food security worldwide, conflict, climate shocks and Covid-19 were already wreaking havoc on families’ ability to feed their children,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

“The world is rapidly becoming a virtual tinderbox of preventable child deaths and child suffering from wasting,” she said.

Currently, at least 10 million severely wasted children – or 2 in 3 – do not have access to the most effective treatment for wasting, ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF).

UNICEF has warned that a combination of global shocks to food security worldwide, led by the war in Ukraine, economies struggling with pandemic recovery and persistent drought conditions in some countries due to climate change, is creating conditions for a significant increase in global levels of severe wasting.

“For millions of children every year, these sachets of therapeutic paste are the difference between life and death. A sixteen percent price increase may sound manageable in the context of global food markets, but at the end of that supply chain is a desperately malnourished child, for whom the stakes are not manageable at all,” said Russell.