Millions need to be fed to achieve UN goal

About 3 million undernourished people in the Asia-Pacific region must be lifted out of hunger each month from now on to wipe out hunger by the end of 2030, according to a UN report released on Wednesday.

The report, Asia and the Pacific Regional Overview of Food Security and Nutrition, showed that around 479 million people are still undernourished in Asia and the Pacific, while the deadline of eliminating hunger is just over a decade away.

The Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 of the United Nations call for ending hunger and ensuring all people have adequate access to food all around the year.

To achieve the goal of eliminating hunger in the region, more than 3 million people must escape hunger each month from now until December 2030, said the report.

Kundhavi Kadiresan, regional representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said the task is "not on track" and "progress in reducing undernourishment has slowed a lot in the past few years".

The prevalence of stunting and wasting in the region still remains high, with the stunting rates exceeding 20 percent in a majority of the region's countries. And an estimated 77.2 million children under the age of 5 were stunted in 2018, and 32.5 million suffered from wasting.

In the meantime, overweight and obesity are also rising among both children and adults in the Asia-Pacific region, negatively affecting health and well-being.

The resulting burden of diet-related noncommunicable diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and respiratory problems is placing a great strain on national healthcare budgets and causing productivity losses, according to the report.

In many countries in the region, it said, child undernutrition, overweight, obesity and micronutrient deficiencies are converging at the national level, in individual households and even, in some cases, in the same person.

The report is the second annual report developed collaboratively by four UN agencies on progress in Asia and the Pacific toward one of the Sustainable Development Goals to eliminate hunger and malnutrition by 2030.

It was jointly released by the FAO, the UN Children's Fund, World Food Programme and the World Health Organization on Wednesday in Bangkok.

The report also urges that governments combine efforts to end poverty with nutrition, health and education-oriented policies.

"Some of these developments – such as national legislation on food fortification and the implementation of fiscal policies to promote healthy diets – could prove beneficial. Continued economic growth also has the potential to improve food security and nutrition," the regional heads of the four UN agencies jointly stated.