WHO and UNICEF set a global research agenda on child wasting and nutritional oedema

29 October 2026

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund have jointly brought out a guide for research on wasting and nutritional oedema in infants and children under five years. The document has three parts: a global research priority agenda, guidance on how evidence should be generated, and core outcome sets so that different studies report results in a comparable way. It was prepared because evidence gaps and inconsistent measurement of outcomes came to light while the 2023 WHO guideline on preventing and managing wasting and nutritional oedema was being drawn up. The guide is meant for researchers, policy makers, programme implementers and funders. It runs to 59 pages and was issued by the organization's nutrition and food safety team. Wasting means a child is too thin for its height, and nutritional oedema is swelling caused by severe malnutrition.