Hunger
What is hunger?
Hunger is the condition in which people do not get enough food to provide the nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals and water) that is required for healthy lives. It is estimated that around 850 million individuals around the globe face the problem each day.
Hunger maybe a long or short term problem. Long-term hunger is persistent among people who are trapped by poverty. There is an inherent link between hunger and poverty. While it poor people may not necessarily be hungry, most certainly, almost all the hungry people are poor. There are two main form of hunger:
Chronic Hunger, which is a steady lack of sufficient safe and nutritious food to preserve physical or mental health.
Transitory Hunger, which is caused by natural or human-made disasters such as droughts, conflicts or bad policies.
There are several terms which are associated with hunger. These terms include undernutrition and malnutrition.There is a slight difference between the 2 terms. Undernutrition refers to the situation of consuming insufficient food, while malnutrition refers to the situation of consuming improper and insufficient food
Who is Hungry?
Although hunger is largely a problem which affects devloping countries, developed countries are not immune to hunger. It is estimated that 820 million individuals, or 96% of those hungry reside in developing countries. People suffering from sexually transmitted diseases such as AID/HIV are also often affected by hunger as they are not as productive as those who are healthy and so they cannot earn as much.
Childhood hunger is also prevalent in many developing countries. It is estimated that more than 150 million children, aged 5 and under are malnourished. Statistics for fatality from hunger are high. With an estimated 16,000 children under the age of 5 die from hunger each day.
What is the current situation?
Food producers aroud the globe produce adequate food to support the world's population. However, most of the food produced is concentrated in developed countries, and most of the developing countries do not get sufficient food. Globalisation has brought in a world where more than a billion are overfed while millions of people are still suffering from the continued probelm of hunger. The main cause of hunger is mainly attributed to unequal food distribution
Developing Countries
Hunger manifests itself in different forms. These include a decrease in energy levels, fall in productivity, diseases, and ultimately starvation and eventual death. Different countries suffer from different degrees of hunger. There are a few places around the world where the occurences of starvation are more pronounced. These countries are mainly concentrated in Africa, with several Asian countries experiencing severe hunger as well.
Political factors, in the form of corruption, as well as freak weather conditions, have caused Hunger to be a major problem in Haiti. 63% of Haiti's population are suffer from undernutrition. 76% of Haiti children under the age of 5 are underweight
Approximate figures show that about 11 million people in the horn of Africa are on the verge of starvation, not forgetting the millions who are already suffering from hunger. Reasons being long droughts and wars. Places like Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia are some of the majorly affected places.
In North Korea, political factors are the main cause of hunger.Food insecurity caused by the country’s economic problems, is further affected unpredictable freak weather conditions. Till today, the North Korean government has failed to solve the problems of its hungry. Many of the country's 23 million people are severly undernourished and 37% of the young children are malnoruished.
Citations & References:
http://www.elca.org/openaworld/haiti/morefacts.html(accessed March 30, 2008)
http://www.wfp.org/country_brief/indexcountry.asp?country=408(accessed March 30, 2008)
http://www.bread.org/learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html(accessed March 30, 2008)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition(accessed March 30, 2008)
http://www.care.org/campaigns/world-hunger/facts.asp(accessed March 30, 2008)
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/Cutting_World_Hunger_Science_Mag.pdf(accessed March 12, 2008)
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/04/global/burslem.htm(accessed March 12, 2008)
http://www.ccpr.ucla.edu/ccprwpseries/ccpr_025_06.pdf(accessed March 12, 2008)
http://www.worldfoodprize.org/assets/YouthInstitute/05proceedings/MillardNorthHighSchool.pdf(accessed March 12, 2008)