HUNGER

Chronic undernourishment or outright starvation. Today I pranav stand before you to air out my voice on the topic hunger. Hunger affects hundreds of millions of people. The world produces enough food to feed its entire people, but that food is not distributed equally among the rich and poor or across national boundaries. In addition, war, drought, or pestilence can produce local outbreaks of mass starvation. Famine (Latin fames, hunger), severe shortage of food, generally affecting a widespread area and large numbers of people. Natural causes include droughts, floods, earthquakes, insect plagues, and plant disease. Human causes include wars, civil disturbances, sieges, and deliberate crop destruction. Widespread, chronic hunger and malnutrition may result from severe poverty, inefficient food distribution, or population increases disproportionate to the food-producing or procuring capacity of people in a region. The immediate consequences of famine are weight loss in adults and retarded growth in children. Malnutrition,

especially protein-energy malnutrition, then increases throughout the affected population and mortality rates raise, usually beginning with the old and the young. These deaths are due not only to starvation, but also to diminished ability to fight infection. In the past, epidemics of typhus and plague caused famines that resulted in high mortality rates. In recent times, diarrhea, measles, and tuberculosis have taken a high toll in famine areas. One of the most dramatic, large-scale sociological consequences of famine is population migration. For example, about 1.6 million people emigrated from Irelandchiefly to the United Statesto escape Irelands potato famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1847. Modern migrations have often been from rural areas to cities. The population of Nouakshott, the capital city of Mauritania, quadrupled in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely as a result of famine in the Sahel (sub-Saharan) region of Africa. MALNUTRITION, dietary condition caused by a deficiency or excess of one or more essential nutrients in the diet. Malnutrition is characterized by a wide array of health problems, including extreme weight loss, stunted growth, weakened resistance to infection, and impairment of intellect. Severe cases of malnutrition can lead to death.

Children suffer from the effects of starvation more quickly than adults. According to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), malnutrition contributes to the deaths of more than 6 million children under age five each year. Typically, starving children develop a condition called protein-energy malnutrition (PEM). The two most common forms of PEM, marasmus and kwashiorkor, occur in all developing countries and are life-threatening conditions. Marasmus occurs when a child is weaned earlier than normal and receives foods low in nutrients. The child may also suffer repeated infections, such as gastroenteritis, due to poor hygiene. A child with marasmus is very underweight, with no body fat and wasted muscles. Kwashiorkor occurs when a child is weaned later than normal and receives starchy foods low in protein. In this disease, the child's abnormally low body weight is often masked by water retention, which makes the face moon-shaped and the belly swollen. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), specialized United Nations agency whose main goal is to eliminate hunger on a world scale. The organizations mandate is to raise levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy.

The FAO originated at a conference called by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hot Springs, Virginia, in May 1943. The 34 nations represented established the UN Interim Commission on Food and Agriculture. In October 1945 the first session of the FAO was held in Qubec City, Canada.