Nepal has moved up from having an ‘alarming’ hunger situation to ‘serious’

Nepal has moved up from having an ‘alarming’ hunger situation to ‘serious’, according to the scores of the Global Hunger Index 2013 report released this week.

Nepal makes improvements in hunger reduction

The report, published by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), scores countries based on three equally weighted indicators-- the proportion of people who are undernourished, the proportion of children under five who are underweight, and mortality rate of children under five.

Nepal’s position in a year has gone up from 60 to 49 among 120 countries surveyed by the report, with a score of 17.3.  The GHI considers a score above 30 as extremely alarming, 20-29.9 alarming, 10-19.9 serious, 5-9.9 moderate and 4.9 low.

“The country’s food production has improved but the major factor in hunger reduction is that people now have increased economic access to food,” says Pushpa Ram Mathema, a food security specialist. “We have to attribute this to higher household income and remittance.”

Nepal moved up from being categorised as ‘alarming’ to ‘serious’ only this year. According to GHI reports Nepal’s score has been gradually improving from 28.0 in 1990 to 27.3 in 1995 to 25.3 in 2000 and 22.3 in 2005.

Within the region Nepal’s position is above India, Bangladesh and Pakistan but behind Sri Lanka on the index. Although South Asia has witnessed a decline of almost 11 points, it still has the highest regional GHI score in the world.

The 2013 Index indicates that global hunger is decreasing; the 2013 world GHI score has fallen by 34 percent from the 1990 GHI score. Yet world hunger still remains ‘serious’ with 19 countries suffering from levels of hunger that are either at ‘alarming’ or ‘extremely alarming’.

source: nepalnews.com