A third of people hospitalised with malnutrition in the year to April 2023 were children.
This is not correct. It comes from FOI data reported by the Times, which shows that about 3% of malnutrition admissions in England were children in the year to April 2023.
From 2022 to April 2023, almost 11,000 Brits - a third of which were children - were hospitalised [with malnutrition].
Two articles in the Sun—one published on 3 August and the other on 10 July—claimed that a third of the people admitted to hospital with malnutrition in the year to April 2023 were children.
In fact the share who were children, which comes from data about England reported in the Times, was about 3%.
The Sun has now corrected the July article, following contact from Full Fact. The other has not been corrected at the time of publication.
Media outlets must be accurate when reporting on the prevalence of health conditions, so that people see a fair picture of the problems in society. And when mistakes happen, they must be corrected quickly.
We have written before about confusion over the number of children admitted to hospital with malnutrition.
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The provisional data described in the Sun articles was obtained by the Times using Freedom of Information requests.
As part of its Health Commission project, the Times reported that 10,896 NHS patients in England were hospitalised with malnutrition between April 2022 and April 2023.
Of these, it said that 312 were children, which amounts to about 3% of the total—not a third.
Malnutrition is rarer in children than it is in adults. It is most common among the elderly and those with long-term health conditions.
Image courtesy of Annie Spratt
As detailed above, The Sun amended its article published on 10 July.
After we published this fact check, we contacted The Sun again to request a correction to its article published on 3 August.
The Sun amended this after we got in touch.
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