Despite the possibility of achieving the Millennium Development Goal on halving the proportion of hungry people in developing countries by 2015, one in every eight people around the world still experience hunger, data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations showed.

FAO data entitled The state of food insecurity in the world, 2012 showed that about 870 million people in the world do not eat enough to be healthy, which means that one in every eight people worldwide goes to bed hungry each night.

From 1990 to 2010, the number of people living with chronic hunger has declined by 130 million people, while for developing countries, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 23.2 percent to 14.9 percent for the past 20 years.

The UN organization noted that most of the progress against hunger was achieved before 2007 and 2008, adding that since then, global progress in reducing hunger has slowed and leveled off. It also mentioned that regions such as Asia and Latin America have reduced the number of hungry people, while the number is on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Countries and the international community must do more to fight hunger: invest in farmers and agriculture and create jobs and safety nets for the poorest,” FAO stated.

The World Health Organization (WHO), on the other hand, said that hunger is No. 1 on the list of the world’s top 10 health risks. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

WHO noted that poverty is the principal cause of hunger, adding that extreme poverty remains an alarming problem in the world’s developing regions.

It also mentioned that harmful economic systems, conflict and climate change were some of the causes of hunger and poverty.

Meanwhile, a report from UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) also linked hunger to child mortality, saying a third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries are linked to undernutrition. The IGME report showed that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from pregnancy through age two, are the critical window in which to tackle undernutrition.

“A proper diet in this period can protect children from the mental and physical stunting that can result from malnutrition,” it noted.

Furthermore, the World Food Programme (WFP) warned that by 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns will have pushed another 24 million children into hunger, and almost half of these children will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

WFP also said that it costs just $0.25 a day to provide a child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy.