100m saved from hunger over last decade: UN
The number of hungry people in the world has dropped by 100 million over the last 10 years but one in nine are still undernourished, with Asia home to the majority of the underfed, the UN said yesterday.
The UN's food agencies said the global number was down over 200 million since the early 1990s, but warned that despite the progress made, "about 805 million people in the world suffer from hunger."
The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of undernourished people by 2015 is within reach "if appropriate and immediate efforts are stepped up," the Food and Agriculture Organization, International Fund for Agricultural Development and World Food Programme said in a yearly report.
To date, 63 developing countries have reached the target and six more are on track to reach it by 2015, they said.
The "State of Food Insecurity in the World" report said access to food had improved rapidly in countries that had seen overall economic progress, notably in East and Southeast Asia, but also South Asia and Latin America.
However, despite significant progress overall, several regions and sub-regions are struggling, with more than one in four people still chronically undernourished in Sub-Saharan Africa, while Asia as a whole is home to the majority of the hungry, some 526 million people.
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