Facts On World Hunger

Brace yourself for the information that you will be coming face to face with today. All the points below just reiterate the fact that there are millions of children and adults who are malnourished. The situation is pathetic, as children are dying in large numbers every year. The sufferers are those people who are caught in a vicious circle of life and death, which has carried on for generations. It needs just one of them to break the spell, but to do that it is essential for that person to survive. It does not seem to be so; children do not even live beyond 5 years. Why do they suffer such pain and misery?

This was one question that presented itself to me when I came across these facts; I shed a few tears, and then looked around to make sure that no one had seen me. I felt foolish having done that because the facts here will certainly make everyone sit up and take notice, a few of you might even shed a tear!!!I believe, every human on Earth is born with a purpose and deserves to live.

Poverty and hunger are some of the factors that disrupt the plans of nature and provide us with unnerving facts on world hunger:

• Hunger, is the situation when there is extreme poverty. In this condition, individuals and families find it difficult to meet their basic needs.
• When a family lives in poverty, there is no one they can turn to.
• Every year about 15 million children die because of hunger.
• Someone dies of hunger every 3.6 seconds.
• The Indian subcontinent houses almost half of the world’s hungry people.
• There are 840 million malnourished people in the world, out of which 799 million live in the developing world.
• Children under the age of 5 make up more than 153 million of the world’s malnourished people.
• Nearly 183 million children are underweight.
• Every year, six million children die because of hunger.
• There is increased child and adult mortality due to the lack of a good diet and essential vitamins and minerals.
• The intellectual development of a child is hampered because of malnutrition. Malnourished children suffer from stunted growth and do not do as well as well-nourished children.
• Since the Black Death, malnutrition is responsible for more than half of the deaths worldwide.
• All it takes is the price of one missile to feed a school of hungry children with lunch every single day for 5 years.
• Due to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women, the infant mortality rate is high too.
• Over 500 million people in the American, Asian and Latin American countries are living in "absolute poverty."
• It is estimated that 1/3rd of the world is well fed; 1/3rd is under-fed while the rest is starving.
• Around 3 billion people in the world find it difficult to survive on US$2 a day.
• Every year since 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been celebrating 16th October as World Food day.