Thursday, October 15, 2009

More than 1 billion people hungry worldwide: FAO




New Delhi, Oct 14 (PTI) More than one billion people go to bed hungry everyday as the deadly combination of a severe food shortage and one of the worst global financial crises in living memory has shrunk food aid to an all-time low, a UN body said today.

"The combination of food and economic crises has pushed the number of hungry people worldwide to historic levels--more than one billion people are undernourished," Food and Agriculture Organisation( FAO) estimated in its annual hunger report-2009, produced in collaboration with the World Food Programme (WFP).

Bulk of the starving population belong to the developing world, with Asia and the Pacific region estimated to have about 642 million hungry people in 2009, Sub-Saharan Africa 265 million,
Latin America and the Caribbean 53 million while the Near East and North Africa 42 million, the report said.