Dangers Of Global Food Security

Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Also Included In: Aid / Disasters
Article Date: 25 Jul 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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The global food security crisis endangers the lives of millions of people, particularly the world's poorest who live in countries already suffering from acute and chronic malnutrition.

Multiple factors are behind the crisis, including:

-- rapidly increasing energy prices
-- lack of agricultural sector investment
-- rapidly rising demand for food arising from economic growth and higher incomes
-- trade distorting subsidies
-- recurrent bad weather and environmental degradation
-- subsidized production of bio-fuels that substitute food production
-- imposition of export restrictions leading to hoarding and panic buying

The health implications are immense, particularly in the 21 countries that WHO says suffer from acute or chronic malnutrition.

To respond to the health threats, WHO provides guidance to the UN Secretary-General's High Level Task-Force on the Global Food Security Crisis. The Task-Force was formed in April 2008 to create and coordinate the implementation of a prioritized action plan.

WHO's fundamental considerations are to:

-- Underscore the human dimension of the crisis.
-- Monitor its impact on nutrition, health and poverty, plus its effect on the Millennium Development Goals.
-- Provide sound information and analyses to target the most vulnerable groups.
The consequences of inaction will be enormous for public health, and include:

-- Increased malnutrition, child and maternal mortality and morbidity, and communicable diseases.
-- An inability for the poorest to afford healthy food, forcing them to buy low-quality products, negatively changing dietary patterns, and increasing the burden of noncommunicable diseases.
-- Less money to spend on health services because of higher food bills. This will affect greatly people living with HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis in particular.
-- Likely impaired mental development, diminished learning ability, reduced work productivity, and increased prevalence of chronic disease.
-- Likely increase in wasting (low weight for height) among young children, plus anaemia and other micronutrient deficiency conditions, especially among women and children.
-- A delay in attaining health and nutrition-related Millennium Development Goals (1, 4, 5 and 6).

- WHO and the Global Food Crisis: The Health and Nutrition Dimensions

World Health Organization (WHO)
http://www.who.int

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