The COVID-19 pandemic caused an estimated 18 per cent increase in the number of people facing hunger, a UN report found, dealing a massive setback to efforts to ensure everyone has access to food.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused an estimated 18 per cent increase in the number of people facing hunger, areleased on Monday found, dealing a massive setback to efforts to ensure everyone has access to food.
The"economic downturns as a consequence of COVID-19 containment measures all over the world have contributed to one of the largest increases in world hunger in decades," said the annual food security and nutrition report compiled by several UN agencies.Although the full impact of the pandemic cannot yet be determined, the report estimated around 118 million more people faced hunger in 2020 than in 2019, an increase of 18 percent.
More than half of the people who were malnourished lived in Asia , more than one third in Africa and eight percent or 60 million in Latin America, the report said.In some countries,"in particular the poorest," measures to fight the pandemic hampered circulation and prevented subsistance farmers from selling produce on local markets, noted Dominique Burgeon, a director of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations .
The UN agencies said there is a unique opportunity to reverse the dynamic this year however, thanks to two major food and nutrition summits plus the COP26 meeting on climate change.The report was jointly published by the FAO, the International Fund for Agricultural Development , the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund , the UN World Food Programme and the World Health Organization .