As the world continue to struggle with the effect of COVID-19, World Food Programme (WFP), has warned that in addition to the threat posed by the virus, the world faces “multiple famines of biblical proportions” that could result in 300,000 deaths per day, a “hunger pandemic”.
WFP Executive Director David Beasley in his report to the UN security Council recently, through an online briefing broadcast by the UN on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, highlighted the fact that there are currently 821 million food-insecure people in the world.
He warned that If the oeaders don’t prepare and act now, to secure access, avoid funding shortfalls and disruptions to trade, the result according to him could be a “humanitarian catastrophe in a short few months”.
According to him: “Millions of civilians living in conflict-scarred nations, including many women and children, face being pushed to the brink of starvation, with the spectre of famine a very real and dangerous possibility.
“821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, chronically hungry. And as Dr Chu just pointed out as the new global report on food crises, that’s published recently shows there are a further 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse.
The report entitled “Protection of civilians from conflict-induced hunger”, the briefing coincided with the release of the Global Report on Food Crises 2020.
The report highlights 55 countries where 135 million people face crisis-level food insecurity, and that is without counting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the response to which creates an “excruciating trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from the coronavirus to have them die from hunger.
