Published 22 April 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b1651
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b1651

News

Malnutrition and hunger rise as economic crisis hits world’s poorest people

John Zarocostas

1 Geneva

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The global economic crisis could trigger another worldwide famine, with millions of people losing their jobs in poor nations that already face huge food problems, a top United Nations official has warned.

The number of hungry people in the world could rise this year by up to 100 million—on top of the nearly one billion people who were undernourished in 2008, said David Nabarro, head of the UN’s task force on the global food security crisis.

"We are anticipating, with the reduction in their purchasing power . . . that they are going to be facing extreme problems in ensuring that they can feed themselves and their families. We are at a quite troublesome moment," said Dr Nabarro.

Meanwhile ministers of agriculture from the G8 group of most industrialised democracies said on 20 April in a declaration that "the world is very far" from reaching the UN’s millennium development goal . . . [Full text of this article]


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