The global community is not on course to end hunger by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) deadline of 2030, authors a new report on hunger trends across the world have warned.
The report – Global Hunger Index 2016 – notes that although the developing world has made substantial progress in reducing hunger among the populace by 29 percent since 2000, the levels of hunger are considered ‘serious’ or ‘alarming’ in at least 50 countries.
A press statement accompanying the report released by agriculture policy research organisation, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said: “If hunger declines at the same rate as the report finds it has since 1992, more than 45 countries will still have “moderate” to “alarming” hunger scores in the year 2030, far short of the goal to end hunger by that year.”
Goal 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations last year has the objective of ending hunger and achieving food security by 2030.
“Simply put, countries must accelerate the pace at which they are reducing hunger or we will fail to achieve the second Sustainable Development Goal,” said IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan.
Ghana
The Global Hunger Index ranks countries ranks on progress in dealing with hunger among the population based on four main indicators: undernourishment, child mortality, child wasting and child stunting.
Ghana was ranked 62 out of 118 countries.
The report noted one in every five children under the age of five years in Ghana is stunted. It said the prevalence of stunting in children under five in Ghana is 18.7 percent.
The figure has fallen from 41.2 percent in the 1990s. Child stunting is used to describe children who suffer from low height for their age as a result of chronic undernutrition.
The report also notes that 2.3 percent of the population in Ghana is undernourished and under-five mortality in the country is 6.2 percent.
This is despite Ghana being considered one of the success stories in Africa, being only one of three countries in Africa, south of the Sahara that has reduced its hunger score by more than 50 percent since 2000.
The report classifies Ghana as a moderately hungry country, indicating, there is still much progress to be made in Ghana to really eliminate hunger by the 2030 UN goal.
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