HARROWING HUNGER NUMBERS

October 16 is World Food Day. There are more hungry people in the world than the combined populations of the U.S., Canada, and the European Union. Many of those who are hungry simply don’t have access to food because of poverty, civil unrest, crumbling infrastructures, lack of food-storage facilities, and outmoded farming techniques.  

·    Hunger and hunger-related diseases kill approximately 9 million people a year, more than twice the number who die from AIDS, malaria, and TB combined.

·    A child dies from hunger every 5 seconds. Almost half these deaths — 3.1 million in 2013 — are among children under age 5 who die from causes like diarrhea, malaria, and measles, which their undernourished bodies and compromised immune systems cannot fend off.

·    805 million people are undernourished each day; worldwide, 1 person in 9 goes to bed hungry every night.

·    It costs 25 cents a day to provide a child with all of the nourishment he or she needs to grow up strong and healthy. 

Source: Huffington Post, 10/16/14, World Food Day