Hunger deadlier than AIDS

Today, being the World Hunger Day, offers a reminder on the importance of food to healthy living, and the need to continue exploring all possibilities for eradicating hunger in the world.

Millennium Development Goal 1, for example, seeks to “eradicate extreme poverty and hunger’,’ or by 2015 at most, reduce by half, the population of people living in hunger.

So, how well has this been achieved?

Taking a look at the hunger index released this year by the World Health Organization (WHO), the goal is nowhere near achievement, as 2015 draws close.

Here are a few surprising findings about hunger, which the World Health Organisation released in 2014:

Many people in the world do not have enough food. A total of 842 million people in the world are hungry.

Asia is worst hit, as it constitutes 552 of this number, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, with 24.8% of the population.

Hunger kills more people yearly than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, put together.

Millions of women, men and children die each year because of chronic persistent hunger, of which two million are children. One third of all death in children is caused by under nutrition.

Poverty is the major cause of hunger. A situation where people do not have sufficient money to purchase food

About 20,000 people die from poverty every day, with 10 percent from hunger

There is a huge variation in how much people eat, which shows that they do not eat healthily