925 Million Suffer from Chronic Starvation

ROMEApproximately 925 million people in the world suffer from chronic starvation, and a child dies every six seconds from starvation, noted a recently released statistic from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). They reinforced that while the number has dipped below the 1 billion mark, world starvation remains unacceptably high.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World" report will be jointly published by FAO and WFP in October; however, the figure was released in advance of the Sept. 20-22, 2010, summit meeting in New York called to speed progress toward achievement of the UNs Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the first of which is to end poverty and hunger.

"But with a child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment related problems, hunger remains the world's largest tragedy and scandal," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. "This is absolutely unacceptable."

Diouf warned that achieving the MDG hunger reduction target is at serious risk, and if recent increases in food prices persist they could hamper efforts to further reduce the numbers of the world's hungry.

"Vigorous and urgent action by nations and the world has been effective in helping to halt galloping hunger numbers," WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran said. "But this is no time to relax. We must keep hunger on the run to ensure stability and to protect lives and dignity."

Globally, the 2010 hunger figure marked a decline of 9.6 percent from the 2009 level. This reduction was mostly concentrated in Asia, where 80 million fewer people were estimated to be going hungry this year. In sub-Saharan Africa the drop was much smallerabout 12 millionand one out of three people there would continue to be undernourished.

Other key findings of the report include: