Short Communication - (2020) Volume 10, Issue 4
The problem of hunger and undernourishment has been widely prevalent for decades together and has found a constant priority in the various global development goals. Acknowledging the fact that the global population is more or less exposed to the threat of food insecurity, it has been projected that in excess of 2 billion people are lacking consistent access to safe, healthy and adequate amount of food. It is very much clear that our efforts to respond to these challenging trends have to be well planned and concerted, especially in terms of the involvement of all the stakeholders, including international welfare agencies. In conclusion, the problem of hunger is on the rise, especially in the low and middle-income nations. The need of the hour is to make it as a public health priority and respond to the problem in an effective and well-coordinated manner.
Hunger. Undernourishment. Food insecurity
The problem of hunger and undernourishment has been widely prevalent for decades together and has found a constant priority in the various global development goals [1]. In-fact, the number of undernourished people across the world has shown a gradual rise, with almost 820 million individuals did not have adequate amount of food to eat in the year 2018 [2]. It is important to note that the African and Asian regions are the most affected, with the prevalence of undernourishment reaching close to 20% and 12% respectively [2,3].
Acknowledging the fact that the global population is more or less exposed to the threat of food insecurity, it has been projected that more than 2 billion people are lacking consistent access to safe, healthy and adequate amount of food [2,3]. The existing problem has been influenced to a significant extent due to the prevailing food insecurity in different parts of the world [3]. Moving further, the prevalence of low birth weight and stunting has also remained quite challenging [2]. All these estimates clearly indicate that we are falling short and very much off-track to accomplish the goal of zero hunger by 2030 [2]. It is quite distressing that even the prevalence of overweight and obesity has shown a gradual rise in all the geographical regions, especially among the school-going children, adolescents and adults [4,5].
The findings of a recently released report have indicated the incorporation of another indicator to assess the prevalence of moderate or severe forms of food security depending on a unique scale assessing experience about food insecurity (viz. doubt about their ability to obtain food, compromise done on quality / quantity of the consumed food, etc.) [3]. It is a very effective indicator to understand the depth of the problem in a better and a comprehensive manner [3]. In addition, it has been observed that incidents of economic crisis in a nation and humanitarian conflicts has casted a big-time impact on the prevalence of malnutrition and undernourishment [2,3].
It is very much clear that our efforts to respond to these challenging trends have to be well planned and concerted, especially in terms of the involvement of all the stakeholders, including international welfare agencies [3,5]. Further, in order to ensure food security and nutrition, we have to formulate holistic financial and social policies to effectively respond to the financial crisis and simultaneously avert any compromise of the essential health care services [1,4]. In addition, we will require financial investment for the structural transformation, so that food security / nutrition issues are handled along with the poverty reduction efforts [1,3,5].
In conclusion, the problem of hunger is on the rise, especially in the low & middle income nations. The need of the hour is to make it as a public health priority and respond to the problem in an effective and well-coordinated manner.
Citation: Saurabh RamBihariLal Shrivastava, Prateek Saurabh Shrivastava. Global Rising Trends of Undernourishment and Overnourishment: World Health Organization. Prim Health Care, 2020, 10(4), 001.
Received: 26-Jul-2020 Published: 31-Aug-2020
Copyright: © 2020 Saurabh RamBihariLal Shrivastava, et al. This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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