When it comes to Global Poverty, there are more than a few questions that are consistently asked. How many people are living in poverty? What kind of progress has been made? How much does it cost to eliminate world Hunger? Is global hunger a solvable problem? While these questions seem difficult, their answers are relatively simple. The World Food Programme has complied a list of 10 things one should know about World Hunger in 2013 to help clarify the problem and launch the world into action to eliminate hunger across the globe.

1. Approximately 870 million people in the world do not eat enough to be healthy. That means that one in every eight people on Earth goes to bed hungry each night.

2. The number of people living with chronic hunger has declined by 130 million people over the past 20 years. For developing countries, the prevalence of undernourishment has fallen from 23.2 to 14.9 percent over the period 1990–2010.

3. Most of the progress against hunger was achieved before 2007/08. Since then, global progress in reducing hunger has slowed and leveled off.

4. Hunger is number one on the list of the world’s top 10 health risks. It kills more people every year than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

5. A third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries is linked to under nutrition.

6. The first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from pregnancy through age two, are the critical window in which to tackle under nutrition. A proper diet in this period can protect children from the mental and physical stunting that can result from malnutrition.

7.  It costs just US $0.25 per day to provide a child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy.

8.  If women in rural areas had the same access to land, technology, financial services, education and markets as men, the number of hungry people could be reduced by 100-150 million.

9. By 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns could have pushed another 24 million children into hunger. Almost half of these children would be in sub-Saharan Africa.

10. Hunger is the single biggest solvable problem facing the world today.

-Kira Maixner
Source World Food Programme
Photo The Telegraph