Nikodem Chinowski talks to Maciej Bagiński
The UN warns that last year more than 730 million people were exposed to the effects of hunger, including one in five residents of Africa. Is it that dramatic?
Fortunately, the situation is not yet so dire that almost three-quarters of a billion people in the world are going hungry. The data presented by the UN covers all five stages that occur due to food insufficiency. The first stage means that the first symptoms of the threat of famine will appear. The second is an increased risk when families are still able to provide food, but are no longer able to meet some basic needs. And here we are still far from famine. The third stage, which already indicates the beginning of a crisis, occurs when families have to skip some meals or are barely able to provide a minimum amount of food, but this is at the expense of other basic needs. The fourth stage, already critical, is when people have to skip many meals, receive only a minimum amount of food at the expense of other areas of life or have lost their savings. This is the last step on the ladder of malnutrition, that is, famine, which is already a humanitarian catastrophe and requires external aid to combat. For example, it is estimated that 35,000 people are currently in such a tragic situation in South Sudan, 153,000 in neighboring Sudan, and up to 495,000 in the Gaza Strip.
