India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Yemen are a few countries with the highest percentages of undernourished women and children under 5 years, according to a detailed analysis. A detailed analysis by The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) under the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that almost half a billion women and children under 5 in the developing world are undernourished. The analysis revealed that the number could increase by 20 percent, reaching one in five within a decade, due to the impact of climate change on global food production. For example, India , with 61 million undernourished children, would be at increased risk of additional undernourishment since its food production is estimated to decrease by 30 percent, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Today, 495 million women and children under 5 in the developing world are undernourished. That is 150 million or one in four in Africa, 315 million or one in seven in Asia, and 30 million or one in 11 in Latin America and the Caribbean . "Food security is under threat by climate change. The linkages between its impacts on global food production, price volatility, population growth and nutrition need to be addressed in order to tackle undernourishment of these more vulnerable groups," Julio Frenk, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Board of PMNCH and Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, said. According to the analysis, it is the equation of climate change and its impacts on food production plus increased population growth that would result in a deficit of global food production versus demand, which could increase by 100 million the number of undernourished women and children by 2020. Malnutrition in the form of overnutrition is also a growing problem in low- and middle- income countries where women and children have increasing access to inexpensive, calorie-rich but nutrient poor foods.

India among developing nations with highest pc of undernourished women, kids