How is chronic hunger different to famine?

Katie Dunn gives her thoughts on the spread of chronic hunger, and how it is often overlooked by the media.

Jamie Theakston holds a malnourished child at a hospital feeding centre in Uganda.

Incidences of famine and starvation in developing nations make the headlines with an astonishing regularity. Yet, whilst famines are devastating, and quite rightly lead to appeals for aid, chronic hunger and malnutrition gain nothing of the same notoriety, and yet are much more widespread.

When the word famine is mentioned, it inevitably brings to mind emotive newsreel images of emaciated mothers clutching babies too hungry and exhausted to even cry. The very nature of a famine as reported in the media requires many thousands to have already died before the matter is considered newsworthy, meaning it is already too late to prevent. However, only 10 per cent of the people in the world who go hungry suffer from this acute form of hunger. The other 90 per cent in fact suffer from chronic and hidden forms of hunger.

Chronic hunger is a prolonged state of under nourishment; sufferers simply do not get enough good quality food to eat to maintain full health. In contrast to the dramatic nature of famine, chronic hunger is generally not deemed newsworthy, for the simple fact that it is so widespread, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia. The number of people who are undernourished in sub-Saharan Africa is actually still increasing, and yet this is ignored by much of the world.

The most recent UN estimates suggest that 850 million people suffer from chronic hunger worldwide, of which 250 million live in India, 125 million in China, and a further 200 million in sub-Saharan Africa. Hidden hunger (the lack of essential vitamins and minerals) affects around 2 billion people worldwide, and yet how often is it shown in the media?

These forms of hunger are as dangerous as acute hunger and famine, if not more so as they are so ignored. They are both a cause and consequence of poverty; chronic hunger holds back economic growth, as an undernourished workforce cannot produce as well as a fully-nourished one, removing the capacity of a country to compete in the global market. The hungry are often victims of social exclusion, preventing them access to fresh, clean water, education and adequate healthcare provision.

The world has demonstrated it can be generous to those suffering at the hands of the most visible forms of hunger - famine. It now needs to recognise fully the effects of other types of hunger, and show the same generosity to those suffering in different ways than victims of famine.