Number of chronically hungry people is rising by 5m a year

The number of people who are chronically hungry is growing worldwide, a report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization says.

The organisation estimated that 842 million people were chronically hungry in 1999-2001: 798 million in the developing world, 10 million in the industrialised countries, and 34 million in the transition countries in the former Soviet Union.

The number of people who are chronically undernourished is increasing by five million every year, the UN organisation says.

Each year six million children under the age of 5 years die because of diseases that result from malnutrition.

The organisation called the latest figures a “setback against the war on hunger.”

It warned that the 1996 world food summit's target of halving the number of chronically hungry people by 2015 looked increasingly remote. To meet the target the number of people who were hungry would have to be cut by at least 24 million people a year, the organisation calculated.

The organisation's annual report on the state of food insecurity said that people suffering from hunger were doing so for a number of reasons. In African countries drought and armed conflict played a major role in causing low food production.

The problem had been compounded by high rates of HIV and AIDS in countries such as Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi. As a consequence of the HIV epidemic many farms were without economically active adults, leaving orphans and elderly people at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

Outside Africa the number of undernourished people also increased in India and Pakistan. However, big improvements took place in Latin America and the Caribbean. The report noted in particular the success of Brazil's “zero hunger” campaign, which aims to eliminate hunger by 2007.

Altogether 19 countries, including China, succeeded in reducing the number of hungry people in the past decade, by a total of more than 80 million.

Faster economic growth, especially in the agricultural sector, was one of the reasons why some countries had reduced hunger, the organisation said.