Hunger ravages sub- Sahara: U.N.

ROME— Hunger and malnutrition kill nearly 6 million children a year, and more people are malnourished in subSaharan Africa this decade than in the 1990s, according to a U. N. report released yesterday. Many of the children die from diseases that are treatable, including diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles, said the report by the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

In sub- Saharan Africa, the number of malnourished people grew to 203.5 million people in 2000-2002 from 170.4 million 10 years earlier, the report states, noting that hunger and malnutrition are among the main causes of poverty, illiteracy, disease and deaths in developing countries. The U. N. food agency said the goal of reducing the number of the world’s hungry by half by 2015, set by the World Food Summit in 1996 and reinforced by the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, remains distant but attainable.

“ If each of the developing regions continues to reduce hunger at the current pace, only South America and the Caribbean will reach the Millennium Development Goal target,” Jacques Diouf, the FAO’s director- general, wrote in the report, the agency’s annual update on world hunger. The food agency said the Asia- Pacific region also has a good chance of reaching the targets “ if it can accelerate progress slightly over the next few years.’’

Diouf said most of the targets could be reached if efforts were “ redoubled and refocused.”