[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

Hunger still biggest killer, says r



Hunger still biggest killer, says report

N.C. Menon
Washington, February 9
>From Hindustan Times (New Delhi)

In the last 50 years, almost 400 million people world-wide died of
hunger and poor sanitation ? three times the number of people killed in
all wars fought in the entire 20th century, according to the 10th annual
report of the Bread for the World Institute released here today.

According to the report, ?the largest number of people who suffer
nutritional deficiencies live in South Asia, where poverty,
discrimination against women, unsafe water and poor sanitation
contribute to poor health. More than 50 per cent of children under the
age of five are stunted due to insufficient food consumption and poor
health conditions.?

In the world as a whole, one person in five suffers from persistent
hunger, compared to one in three 25 years ago. Some 791 million of the
hungry people live in the developing world. By region, South Asia
contains 283.9 million hungry people; East and Southeast Asia 241.6
million; Sub-Saharan Africa 179.6 million; Latin America 53.4 million;
Near East and North Africa 32.9 million. The worst conditions continue
to exist in sub-Saharan Africa, where one out of every three persons in
hungry or under-nourished.

A surprising finding in the report is that the US is the only
industrialised country with widespread hunger, with some 31 million
people at risk. The data shows that people in 3.6 per cent of all
American households were hungry and 10.2 per cent of households were at
risk of hunger.

?As much as we would like to think that ours is a generous society, the
fact is that the richest country in the world does less than any other
developed nation to combat pervasive hunger,? says David Beckman,
president of Bread for the World Institute.

The World Food Summit proposed in 1996 that would under nutrition be
reduced 50 per cent by 2015.

The total cost would be $60 billion over 15 years, or $4 billion per
year in increased spending. Clearly that initiative has not taken off.

The study provides some thought-provoking perspective on the cost of
tackling global hunger: When the Y2K computer crisis emerged, the US
Government saw it as an emergency and spent more then $8 billion. US
corporations spent $50 billion on handling the potential danger, and the
world spent more than $500 billion.