Child dies of hunger ‘every five seconds’

MORE than eight years after a pledge to halve the number of the world’s hungry by 2015, that number has hardly budged - with one child dying of hunger every five seconds - a UN agency said yesterday.

Though the number of hungry people in developing countries fell in the early 1990s, that trend was later reversed, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said in its annual report on world hunger.

By 2000-2002 the figure stood at 815 million, just nine million below the decade-earlier estimate.

The target of cutting the number of undernourished people in the developing world in half by 2015 is still within reach, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said, contending that the cost for countries to do that would be more than offset by what they would earn in extra productivity and income.

The report said that present levels of hunger cause the death of more than five million children every year.

It also presented fighting hunger as a good investment, saying that the global costs of achieving the target pale in comparison to the price paid by not acting.

Governments set the goal of halving the undernourished people by 2015 at the UN World Food Summit in 1996.

Wednesday’s report said hunger and malnutrition cost around €22.5 billion in direct medical expenses each year, with estimated indirect costs due to premature death and disability ballooning into hundreds of billions of dollars.

The report said hunger cuts productivity and earnings, reduces school attendance and erodes cognitive abilities.

According to the agency’s estimates, an annual increase in funding of €18bn would be needed to reach the hunger target, but it would reap €90bn in returns each year.

The report blamed the recent rise in hunger levels largely on a worsening situation in the world’s two most populous countries, China and India, both of which had earlier recorded improvements.

The number of undernourished people in other developing countries held steady. All but one of the 16 countries with the highest levels of hunger are in sub-Saharan Africa, where many nations are suffering from food emergencies, the report said.

It proposed a combination of programs to help boost agricultural productivity and direct food aid to achieve the 2015 target.

The report also drew attention to a second challenge faced by developed and developing countries - obesity and diet-related diseases, aggravated in part by urban life-styles.