ROME – Pope Francis, a champion of the poor who has described global inequalities as a “scandal,” was due to attend a three-day UN conference on world hunger, experts, NGOS and representatives from more than 190 countries are attending the confrnrnce.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) the conference organiser said on Wednesday in Rome that the Pope was due to speak on Thursday.
Other notable attendees include U.S. development economist Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Gates’ wife Melinda, who co-chairs the couple’s charitable foundation.
A report by the FAO noted that there has been significant improvement in reducing hunger and malnutrition, yet, progress in reducing hunger and undernutrition has been uneven and exceptionally slow.
The said the fundamental challenge was to sustainably improve nutrition through implementation of coherent policies and better coordinated actions.
They said compared to when the first global nutrition conference was held, in 1992, the number of people in the world without enough to eat has fallen from more than a billion to 805 million, achieving one of the so-called Millennium Development Goal targets for 2015.
They said the meeting was expected to state that “the elimination of malnutrition in all forms was an imperative for health, ethical, political, social and economic reasons.
“The conference is also expected to approve 60 recommendations to help achieve that target,’’ they said.
In June, FAO estimated that global malnutrition comprising undernourishment as well as obesity carries a price tag of around 3.5 million dollars a year through lost productivity and health expenses.
The agencies calculated that 161 million children under the age of 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition, and that 45 per cent of infant deaths last year were hunger-related.
FAO also added that 500 million adults and 42 million children are overweight. (dpa/NAN)