An extra 6.7 million kids younger than five over the world could experience the ill effects of squandering this year due to the financial effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UNICEF cautioned on Tuesday.

As per UNICEF, in India, there are still around 20 million kids under five years old who are experiencing squandering.

As per the Global Hunger Index 2019, squandering among youngsters in India rose from 16.5 percent in 2008-2012 to 20.8 percent in 2014-2018.

Squandering is a dangerous type of lack of healthy sustenance, which makes kids excessively slim and frail, and puts them at more danger of kicking the bucket, helpless development, improvement, and learning.

As indicated by the UNICEF, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, 47 million kids were at that point squandered in 2019.

An extra 6.7 million youngsters younger than five could experience the ill effects of squandering and in this way become hazardously undernourished in 2020 because of the financial effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN kids' organization said.

"Without earnest activity, the worldwide number of kids experiencing squandering could arrive at just about 54 million through the span of the year. This would carry worldwide squandering to levels not seen this thousand years," it said.

Citing an investigation of the Lancet, the UNICEF said 80 percent of these youngsters would be from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

"Over half would be from South Asia alone," it said.

It said the Lancet investigation finds that the commonness of squandering among kids younger than five could increment by 14.3 percent in low and center salary nations this year due to the financial effect of COVID-19.

It's' been seven months since the first COVID-19 cases were accounted for and it is progressively evident that the repercussions of the pandemic are making more mischief youngsters than the malady itself," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.

"Family unit neediness and food frailty rates have expanded. Fundamental nourishment administrations and flexibly chains have been disturbed. Food costs have taken off. Thus, the nature of youngsters' eating regimens has gone down and ailing health rates will go up," she said.