Over the coming year, around 795 million people will continue to face hunger, or “undernourishment,” using medical parlance. A further 2 billion will remain malnourished due to imbalanced diets — another form of hunger, mostly affecting children and women of reproductive age.
Paradoxically, while this happens, more than half a billion will be suffering from obesity and associated noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes and cancer, and risking preventable early death. I don’t like to consider the cup — perhaps plate would be more appropriate — as half empty, but World Food Day hardly seems like a day for celebrations.
All these “numbers” have names and faces. Their suffering and deaths are predictable — most are indeed preventable — and are as unacceptable as the drowning of the two-year old refugee child Aylan. Such predicaments are not natural or accidental, but the result of misguided policies, actions and omissions by public authorities, from the local council to the global community. And that includes the failure to effectively regulate the activities of transnational corporations.
About the author
Flavio Valente
Flavio Valente is a physician and specialist in public health. Since 2007, he has been the secretary general of FIAN International, a human rights organization advocating for the right to adequate food and nutrition that holds consultative status at the United Nations.
