The results are really quite shocking.
In 2011, globally an estimated 101 million children were underweight, or 16% of the global total, according to the World Health Organisation.
Despite the progress made in recent decades, still around 19,000 children die every day, largely from diseases that are preventable.
This means that:-
- 6.9 million children under-5 die every year.
- More than 570,000 children under-5 die every month.
- 19,000 children die every day.
- About 800 children die every hour.
- About 13 children die every minute.
We know that undernutrition contributes to one-third of all under-5 child deaths. This means that under-nutrition contributes to the deaths of about 2.3 million children per year.
- 2.3 million children die each year from hunger.
- About 190,000 children die each year from hunger.
- More than 6000 children die each month from hunger.
- About 200 children die each hour from hunger.
- About 4 children die every minute from hunger.
There is some positive news in the report, as child mortality rates are falling. However, the Global Health Observatory reports that the progress is insufficient to meet the target of halving levels of undernutrition by 2015. Rising food prices may have contributes to the trends.
At the same time, it is clear that an increasing number of children in high-income countries are overweight, driven by bad diets. This rise in obesity is largely driven by promotion of unhealthy fatty foods to children, including fast foods, and lack of education about this. Unfortunately many of these fatty, unhealthy foods are subsidised by taxpayers in the form of agricultural subsidies.
So there is clearly not a problem of production, but a problem of distribution.
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