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Where interventions should be directed to end hunger
2006-05-14 16:27:44
By Rayner Ngonji
Over the past 20 years, the proportion of the world’s people who are hungry has declined from one-fifth to one-sixth, while the absolute number of hungry people has fallen slightly.
But 852 million people, mainly in the developing world, are still chronically or acutely malnourished. Most of them are in Asia, particularly India (221 million) and China (142 million).
Sub-Saharan Africa has 2045 million hungry and is the only region of the world where hunger is increasing. If current trends continue, this region will fail to meet the hunger Millennium Development Goal (MDG).
Hunger continues to be a global tragedy, says a report by UN Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger released recently.
Its elimination requires a concerted and persistent worldwide effort. The Task Force on Hunger is convinced that hunger can be halved by 2015.
Indeed, the task force will be satisfied with the attainment of that goal; it sees reaching the hunger MDG as a milestone in the global effort to eradicate hunger.
Hunger is both a cause and an effort of poverty. It holds back economic growth and limits progress in reducing poverty.
The negative economic impact of hunger is dramatic, the report notes with annual losses of at least 6 10 percent in labour productivity and hence in gross domestic product (GDP) (Figure 3).
Poor and hungry people often face social and political exclusion. They have little access to education, health services, and safe drinking water.
The challenge of halving hunger is thus closely linked with that of achieving the other MDGs.
It is particularly important that hunger reduction should be a major part of poverty reduction strategies, since little progress in reducing poverty is likely as long as large numbers of people suffer from malnutrition.
Hunger occurs in three different forms: acute, chronic, and hidden. Most people with access to television have seen haunting images of the starvation that typically occurs during famines and disasters.
But those suffering from such acute hunger represent only a small proportion – roughly 10 percent of the world’s hungry. Most of the hungry, approximately 90 percent, are chronically undernourished.
Chronic undernourishment is caused by a constant or recurrent lack of access to food of sufficient quality and quantity, often coupled with poor health and caring practices.
It results in underweight and stunted children as well as high child mortality brought about by associated diseases.
High child mortality is brought about by associated disease. Hidden hunger, caused by a lack of essential micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), afflicts more than two billion people, even when they consume adequate amounts of calories and protein, the annual report points out.
The world has demonstrated its generosity in helping the victims of acute hunger. Unfortunately the chronic and hidden forms of hunger are not as dramatic, and receive much less global attention and support.
There are many reasons why people go hungry. In analyses by the Task Force on Hunger and other researchers, poverty, low food production, mothers’ lack of education, poor water, sanitation and health facilities, and climatic shocks have been identified as strongly correlated with high levels of underweight pre-school children in developing countries.
Adequate nutrition begins at the household level, where gender discrimination, traditional practices, and inadequate nutrition awareness can limit the food intake of women and children.
For example, the best nourishment for small children is exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months, then breastfeeding plus complementary food through their first two years.
Yet women may not be able to produce breastmilk of sufficient quality and quantity when they themselves are malnourished.
In some parts of the world, intra-household inequalities may result in women and girls eating last, finishing what remains after the men and boys have eaten.
Many women, besides having limited education, become mothers at a young age, are unable to space their births appropriately, and lack awareness of good nutrition and child nurturing practices.
They often become anaemic when they are pregnant due to lack of iron in their diet. This increases the risk of low birthweight in their babies, perpetuating a vicious circle of malnourishment down the generations.
Good health, coupled with safe water and good sanitation, is vital for maintaining adequate nutrition. Common infectious diseases and parasites prevent people from absorbing and utilizing food properly.
The interaction works both ways: malnutrition and hunger are the number one risk factor for illness worldwide.
For example, malnourishment weakness the immune system and strength of those affected by HIV/AIDS, making them succumb more quickly to the disease.
Poverty is a major cause of hunger. Despite the lower food prices associated with the increases in food production brought about by the Green Revolution, many poor people still cannot afford to buy sufficient food.
Their poverty is often associated with macro and micronutrient deficiencies typically due to limited diets consisting mainly of starchy foods, with little in the way of animal products, vegetables and fruits.
Despite gains in the yields of major food crops, low food production persists in rural areas, especially where agriculture is rainfed. The worst affected areas are those most remote from markets and/or where agricultural production is risky.
Poor access to markets means that many farmers are unable to diversify into higher value commodities or add value through processing.
Due to poor gain storage and the need for cash, many small-scale farmers are forced to sell their crop at a low price immediately after harvest, only to buy grain back later at a higher price in order to feed their families until the next harvest.
While accurate data are scarce, estimates indicate that the majority of hungry people live in rural areas. The task force believes that about half of the hungry live in smallholder farming households, while roughly two-tenths are landless.
A smaller group, perhaps one-tenth, are pastoralists, fisherfolk, and forest users. The remainder, around two-tenths, live in urban areas.
Maps of hunger commonly show which countries have high levels, but no where the concentrations are within a country.
The task force focused on sub-national units (states, provinces, or districts) in order to identify hunger hot-spots.
These are defined as units where the prevalence of underweight children under the age of five is 20 percent or more.
Of the 605 units analysed, the Task Force identified 313 that were hunger hotpots. These contain around 107 million pre-school children who are underweight – roughly 79 percent of the world’s total of 134 million.
The breakdown for the world’s three major developing regions was as follows:
lIn Africa, 229 out of the 366 units analyzed were found to be hunger hotspots; these contain about 28 million underweight pre-school children around 88 percent of the region’s total.
lIn Asia, 76 of the 172 units analyzed were found to be hunger hotspots; these contain about 78 million underweight pre-school children around 95 percent of the region’s total.
lIn Latin America and the Caribbean, only 106 units were analyzed due to limited data; of these, only 8 were hunger hotspots; these contain about 400,000 underweight pre-school children around 17 percent of the region’s total.
This analysis provides useful initial guidance on where to target interventions to end hunger. Poor countries are encouraged to refine the analysis.
However, many countries do not collect data on hunger at present and should make this a priority.
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