This section reports on four global nutrition indicators: stunting, wasting and overweight in children under 5 and anaemia in women aged 15 to 49 years.
The prevalence of stunting among children under 5 in the ECA region was 7.3 percent in 2020, down by almost half from 14.2 percent in 2000 and reduced by 2.7 percentage points in comparison with 2015 (Figure 7). In all subregions and in almost every ECA country, the prevalence of stunting declined continuously from 2015 to 2020. By 2020, in ECA as well as in all subregions, the prevalence of stunting was below the global average of 22 percent.
However, the prevalence varies significantly by subregion. While the prevalence has been especially low in the EU27 and the United Kingdom, the prevalence in both the Caucasus and in CIS Europe and Ukraine remained relatively higher, at 13.1 percent – well above the regional average. In Central Asia, the prevalence (10 percent) also was higher than the ECA regional average, while in the Western Balkans subregion, the prevalence of stunting (6.8 percent) was lower than the ECA average.
During the past two decades, most countries in the ECA region have reduced child stunting at a faster rate than has the world at large, and the prevalence of stunting in most countries in the region in 2020 was less than half the world average. As shown in Figure 8, the prevalence has declined greatly in Albania, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Despite substantial progress, some countries in Central Asia, the Caucasus and CIS Europe and Ukraine still have a relatively higher prevalence of stunting in the region: Azerbaijan (16.3 percent), Ukraine (15.9 percent), Tajikistan (15.3 percent) and Kyrgyzstan (11.4 percent).