Hidden Hunger : A View

Several billion people are classified as the hidden hungry. They may appear adequately fed, but suffer in some way from the lack of essential vitamins or minerals. According to UNICEF, almost 2 billion people are anaemic and 3.7 billion are iron-deficient, most being women. In Africa and Asia iron-deficiency anaemia is thought to cause around a fifth of all maternal deaths. Between 100 and 140 million children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, which can lead to blindness, and diseases associated with this deficiency kill a million children a year. Some 20 million people worldwide are mentally handicapped as a result of iodine deficiency.

Hunger in this Planet : A Statistics and a reality

Millions of people, including 6 million children under the age of 5, die each year as a result of hunger. Hunger not only reduces life expectancy. It costs developing countries up to $128 billion a year in productivity losses, according to FAO.

Since the World Food Summit in 1996, many donors have reduced their aid to agriculture. In 1982, 17 per cent of development assistance went to agriculture. By 2002, this had fallen to 3.7 per cent.

A disproportionately large number of those who suffer from malnutrition are women and children.

In 1984, only about 10 per cent of the world�s food emergencies were caused by man-made disasters such as civil wars. By 1999, it was 53 per cent. There is a strikingly close relationship between incidences of civil conflict and child mortality.

In sub-Saharan Africa, there has been progress in reducing the prevalence of undernourishment. For the first time in several decades, the share of undernourished people in the region�s population declined significantly � from 35 per cent in 1990�92 to 32 per cent in 2001�03, after having reached 36 percent in 1995�97. Southern Africa, West Africa, East Africa and Nigeria saw a decline in the prevalence of undernourishment, but Central Africa experienced a dramatic increase.

Undernourished People whole over the world:

820 million in developing countries are undernourished, the FAO reported in 2006. This is 20 million more than in 1996 when governments pledged at a World Food Summit (WFS) to halve the number of hungry in the world by 2015. Worldwide the number of undernourished people totals 854 million, with 25 million in the transition countries and 9 million in the industrialized countries adding to the number in developing countries.