Facts about global hunger

JOURNEY RESOURCE: HUNGER Source: http://maplecroft.com/portfolio/maps/interactive_map/hunger/

THE GLOBAL HUNGER MAP

Maplecroft’s global map of hunger identifies populations at risk of hunger, profiling 177 countries. It explores the prevalence of undernourishment, analyzing the proportion of people in a population whose food intake is chronically insufficient to meet their minimum energy requirements.

Three regions of high hunger risk are apparent from the global map. They are: Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

Africa Africa is home to some of the world's poorest countries, where prevalence of undernourishment is high and prospects for immediate and rapid economic growth limited.

Countries in central, western and eastern Africa have a particularly high prevalence rate.

The causes of hunger in Africa are wide‐ranging. In East Africa the lack of rainfall in the last 3‐6 years has led to crop failure and the depletion of livestock herds; in Southern Africa, despite good rainfall, more than three million people remain short of food, in part because of the impacts of HIV/AIDS and poor governance; in West Africa 8 million people are facing food shortages, caused by the impacts of chronic poverty, erratic rains and locusts. Poor households are particularly vulnerable to rises in food prices, as up to 75% on income can be spent on food purchases. These effects were particularly acute in 2008.

South Asia, Central America and the Caribbean Countries in South Asia and Central America and the Caribbean also have very high levels of undernourishment. Although there is enough food in these regions to feed the entire population, problems stem from inequality of income distribution and poor natural resource management.

In South Asia, rapidly growing populations and economies have both led to inequitable income distribution and an escalating demand for food.

In Central America, poor management of natural resources including water, indiscriminate deforestation and the depletion of soil for single crop agriculture, combined with natural disasters, affect the ability of governments to meet the needs of their citizens.

HUNGER STATISTICS Despite the fact that the global agricultural system produces sufficient food to feed everyone in the world, 963 million people in the developing world suffer from hunger, a quarter (240 million) of them are children.

Of particular concern is ‘hidden hunger.’ Even if people get enough to eat, they will become malnourished if the food does not provide the proper amounts of micronutrients—vitamins and minerals—to meet daily nutritional requirements. Although this does not produce hunger as one might recognize it, micronutrient deficiencies prevent a third of the world’s children from reaching their intellectual and physical potential.

In recent years, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has reported that the number of undernourished people around the world has been increasing at a rate of almost four million per year. At present, 1 in 7 people still do not get enough food to lead a healthy and active life. Consequently, the effects of hunger pose one of the most critical risks to health worldwide, greater than that of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Each year, more than 20 million low birth weight (LBW) babies are born in the developing world. LBW babies face increased risk of dying during childhood, of reduced working capacity and earnings as adults, and if female, of giving birth to LBW babies themselves.

Almost one‐third of all children in developing countries are stunted, with heights that fall below the normal range for their age. Stunting has been linked to increased illness and death, reduced cognitive ability and school attendance in children, and to lower productivity and lifetime earnings in adults.

Hunger has both direct and indirect economic costs. Direct costs include the medical costs of treating problem pregnancies and deliveries by anemic, underweight mothers, and the severe and frequent illness of children whose lives are threatened by malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea or measles because their bodies and immune systems have been weakened by hunger. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimate that these direct costs add up to US$30 billion per year.

Hunger affects the creation of a productive workforce capable of generating high value outputs, and causes significant losses in national economic productivity. The indirect economic costs of hunger include: lost productivity and income caused by premature death, disability, absenteeism in the workplace, and reduced educational and occupational opportunities. For labor productivity alone, this annual loss is estimated at 6‐10% of GDP per capita.

HUNGER STATISTICS SNAPSHOT: • 963 million people in developing countries do not have enough to eat.

• Every day, more than 16,000 children die from hunger‐related causes – one child every six seconds.

• 54 nations currently do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities to make up the deficit.

• More than 70 percent of the world's 146 million underweight children under age five years live in just 10 countries, with more than 50 per cent located in South Asia alone.

• It is estimated that 684,000 lives child deaths worldwide could be prevented by increasing access to vitamin A and zinc.

THE DIFFERENT FACES OF HUNGER While most people intuitively understand the physical sensation of being hungry following a period without eating; hunger in this sense refers to a discomfort, pain or weakness caused by a prolonged and involuntary lack of access to food.

People go hungry when they cannot grow or buy enough nutritious food, when communities lack adequate health services and clean water, and when climate, conflict or natural disasters disrupt food systems.

Certain subsets of the population, namely women, children, rural inhabitants, displaced persons, and the elderly and sick are disproportionately vulnerable to hunger.

There are several different types of hunger:

Acute hunger or starvation is a condition caused by absolute shortages of food, often due to natural disasters or to inaccessibility of food because of armed conflict or collapse in purchasing power associated with disruptions in labour or food markets.

Chronic hunger is a prolonged, consistent lack of food and nutrition that slowly erodes one’s health and well‐being. This most frequently affects people with low and variable income, limited assets and few marketable skills.

Malnutrition is a condition in which people experience either nutritional deficiencies (under‐nutrition) or an excess of certain nutrients (over‐nutrition).

Undernourishment refers to the status of people whose food intake does not provide enough calories to meet their physiological requirements on a continuing basis.

Hidden hunger refers to the micronutrient and/or vitamin deficiencies found in people who otherwise have access to adequate calories and protein. According to the FAO Food Insecurity Report in 2004, vitamin and mineral deficiencies afflict nearly two billion people worldwide. Furthermore, deficiencies of iron, vitamin A and zinc are ranked among the World Health Organization's (WHO) top 10 leading causes of death through disease in developing countries.