Save the Children International (SCI) has raised the alarm that at least four African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, are at risk of running out of ready-to-use emergency food over the next three months due to aid cuts.

The organisation worried that if the gaps are not plugged, severely malnourished children may be at risk of dying.
SCI explained that Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) is an energy-dense, micronutrient-rich paste typically made from peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil, vitamins, and minerals, packaged in foil pouches with a long shelf life and no need for refrigeration.

The organisation, in a statement released on Monday, said that over the past 30 years, this emergency therapeutic food has saved the lives of millions of children facing acute malnutrition, warning that a severely undernourished child is nine times more likely to die from common infections than a well-nourished child.

It warned that the decline in global nutrition funding could cut off treatment for 15.6 million people across 18 countries, including over 2.3 million severely malnourished children in 2025. It predicted it would continue to worsen in 2026.

The statement disclosed that an estimated 3.5 million children under five experiencing severe acute malnutrition are at risk of death if they do not receive timely treatment and nutrition support, saying that northeast and northwest Nigeria are most affected.

They further stated that the country needs at least 629,000 cartons of RUTF to treat children who are severely wasted — or dangerously thin for their height — during the June-November lean season, but so far only 64 per cent of this has been secured.

Save the Children stated that it requires at least 3,000 cartons of RUTF every month for its ongoing malnutrition programmes. Still, significant funding cuts in 2025 have exacerbated the severity of needs and limited access to much-needed lifesaving support.

Save the Children’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, Yvonne Arunga, said, “Imagine being a parent with a severely malnourished child. Now imagine that the only thing that could help your child bounce back from the brink of death is therapeutic food, and that food is out of stock when it was once available.

“Hunger knows no borders and no limits, and is a force that drains a child’s energy and silences their play and their dreams. At a time when global hunger is skyrocketing, the funding that could save children’s lives has been cut because of recent aid cuts, leading to a global shortage of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food.”

He stated that Save the Children has been providing life-saving nutritional support to children for over 100 years; however, this support is now at risk.

The organisation, however, called on the international community to ensure children who are severely malnourished can receive the urgent support they need by increasing flexible funding to treat severe acute malnutrition and strengthening national and global supply chains.