Where the Hungry Are

There was a considerable amount of attention given to issues like poverty and hunger in the run-up to the recent United Nations summit on progress toward the MDGs. As usual, the talk dies down after the big meeting is over. However, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC, has kept the issue on the table with a new report detailing where the hungry nations are. The list is predictable, because it is the same group of countries with high mortality and high fertility. Nonetheless, it is instructive to be reminded:

The 10 countries with the worst levels of hunger -- all "extremely alarming" or "alarming" -- starting with the worst off, were Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Chad, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Comoros, Madagascar, and the Central African Republic.

In South Asia, the low nutritional, educational and social status of women leads to a higher number of underweight children, the report states.

In sub-Saharan Africa, war and instability and high rates of HIV and AIDS are cited as leading to high child mortality.

The IFPRI website has excellent map visualization resources to allow you see where the hungry nations are, based on their global hunger index (GHI).