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UN agencies urge saving 3 million undernourished people in Asia-Pacific monthly
Four United Nations agencies set out a call for saving about three million undernourished people in Asia and the Pacific from hunger each month from now on, if the region is to meet the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 2 ) on Zero Hunger goal by the end of 2030, says a new report released today by four United Nations agencies.
With nearly half-a-billion of the world’s undernourished people living in Asia-Pacific – and with the 2030 deadline for Zero Hunger just a decade away -the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Food Program (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO) are calling for urgent actions to address hunger and malnutrition in all its forms, and, for the first time in this region, to take decisive, informed and coordinated action to place nutrition at the heart of social protection programs.
The report’s latest figures relating to hunger, including micronutrient deficiencies also known as hidden hunger, child stunting and wasting make for grim reading amid the emerging nutritional complications brought forward by a crisis of overweight and obesity also sweeping the region.
“The prevalence of stunting and wasting in the region remains high, with stunting rates exceeding 20 percent in a majority of the region’s countries. An estimated 77.2 million children under five years of age were stunted in 2018, and 32.5 million suffered from wasting.”
Meantime, overweight and obesity are also rising among both children and adults in Asia-Pacific, negatively affecting health and well-being. The resultant burden of diet-related non-communicable diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and respiratory problems, is placing great strain on national healthcare budgets and causing productivity losses.
“In many countries in the region, child undernutrition, overweight, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies are converging at the national level, in individual households, and even, in some cases, in the same person. A multi-stakeholder approach is needed to address the multiple burdens of malnutrition,” the reports states.
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