UN food agency chief: world on brink of `hunger pandemic’

The head of the U.N. food agency warned that, as the world is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, it is also "on the brink of a hunger pandemic" that could lead to "multiple famines of biblical proportions" within a few months if immediate action isn’t taken.

World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley told the U.N. Security Council that even before COVID-19 became an issue, he was telling world leaders that "2020 would be facing the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II." 

Beasley said today 821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, a further 135 million people are facing "crisis levels of hunger or worse," and a new World Food Program analysis shows that as a result of COVID-19 an additional 130 million people "could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020."

He said in the video briefing that WFP is providing food to nearly 100 million people on any given day, including “about 30 million people who literally depend on us to stay alive.”

Beasley said if those 30 million people can’t be reached, “our analysis shows that 300,000 people could starve to death every single day over a three-month period” — and that doesn’t include increased starvation due to the coronavirus.

"In a worst-case scenario, we could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries, and in fact, in 10 of these countries we already have more than one million people per country who are on the verge of starvation," the AP cited him as saying.

The WFP chief said lockdowns and economic recession are expected to lead to major income losses for the working poor.