• Increase font size
  • Default font size
  • Decrease font size
Home

A new scramble for land: Global Hunger Stats

Wednesday, 20 January 2010 19:31 administrator
E-mail Print PDF
  • 1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat - more than the populations of USA, Canada and the European Union; (Source: FAO news release, 19 June 2009)
  • 907 million people in developing countries alone are hungry; (Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2008)
  • Asia and the Pacific region is home to over half the world’s population and nearly two thirds of the world’s hungry people; (Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2008)
  • 65 percent of the world’s hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. (Source: The State of Food Insecurity in the World, FAO, 2008)
  • 10.9 million children under five die in developing countries each year. Malnutrition and hunger-related diseases cause 60 percent of the deaths; (Source: The State of the World’s Children, UNICEF, 2007)
  • It is estimated that 684,000 child deaths worldwide could be prevented by increasing access to vitamin A and zinc (Source: WFP Annual Report 2007)
  • Undernutrition contributes to 53 percent of the 9.7 million deaths of children under five each year in developing countries. This means that one child dies every six seconds from malnutrition and related causes. (Source: Under five deaths by cause, UNICEF, 2006)
  • Iron deficiency is the most prevalent form of malnutrition worldwide, affecting an estimated 2 billion people. (Source: World Health Organization, WHO Global Database on Anaemia)
  • Iron deficiency is impairing the mental development of 40-60 percent children in developing countries (Source: Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency, A Global Progress Report, p2, UNICEF)
  • Iodine deficiency is the greatest single cause of mental retardation and brain damage. Worldwide, 1.9 billion people are at risk of iodine deficiency, which can easily be prevented by adding iodine to salt (Source: UN Standing Committee on Nutrition. World Nutrition Situation 5th report. 2005)