Minister for the Indo-Pacific Anne-Marie Trevalyan also expressed Uk government’s support to strengthen access to quality healthcare.

And while careful to praise the” significant” efforts of Timor-Leste in improving health services, she said high malnutrition levels for children under five were clearly still a problem for the government.

Visting Timor-Leste for the first time this week, Minister Trevelyan had three days in Dili, where she met Timor-Leste’s Minister for Health Élia António de Araújo dos Reis Amaral for talks on women’s and children’s health and resources support.

“I declared that the malnutrition for children in Timor Leste still becomes one of the problems of the Government of Timor Leste and the Government of the United Kingdom therefore we would like expressed our great commitment to supporting the global health and health security as well as we would like also to help the priorities of the health sector in Timor Leste “Minister Trevelyan told media on Monday.

Minister Trevelyan attended the launch of new community nutrition program targeting child malnutrition supported by UK government in partnership with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Forty seven percent of children under five years of age in Timor-Leste are stunted, 8.6 percent suffer from acute malnutrition, and 23 percent of women of reproductive age (15 -49 years) are anaemic, according to recent data from the World Food Programme.