NEW YORK, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and other 10 leaders working to improve children's health and nutrition in their communities were honored at the Goalkeepers 2024 event held here in New York on Monday.
The annual event, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, took place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly week. It highlighted opportunities to ensure better nutrition for all so that everyone can reach their full potential.
The honorees from different countries were praised for advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals with solutions to keep people healthy and nourished in a rapidly warming world.
"Goalkeepers is about bringing together a community of global changemakers who champion the Sustainable Development Goals to energize and inspire each other to continue making progress," said Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "This year, we're focused on the more than 400 million children who aren't getting the nutrients they need to grow and thrive. While climate change is making that challenge harder to solve, progress is possible."
He said by scaling up existing tools, investing in promising research, and lifting up champions like the ones celebrated today, all children can be ensured to reach their full potential and build global resilience as the world gets hotter.
In 2023, the World Health Organization estimated that 148 million children experienced stunting, a condition where children don't grow to their full potential mentally or physically, and 45 million children experienced wasting, a condition where children become weak and emaciated, leaving them at much greater risk of developmental delays and death. These are the most severe and irreversible forms of chronic and acute malnutrition.
The event followed last week's release of the foundation's eighth annual Goalkeepers report titled "A Race to Nourish a Warming World." The report finds that without immediate global action, climate change will condemn an additional 40 million children to stunting and 28 million more to wasting between 2024 and 2050. ■