Pakistan leads, India follows on worst hunger crisis in the region: report

Pakistan is facing a “serious” hunger problem as an international report released Tuesday put the country ahead of its arch-rival India.

According to the Global Hunger Index report prepared by Washington based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Pakistan, which ranked 107 among 118 developing nations, fares worse than all its neighbours such as China (29), Nepal (72), Myanmar (75), Sri Lanka (84) Bangladesh (90), and Indian (97).

The global community is not on course to end hunger by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal deadline of 2030, IFPRI said in a statement while releasing the report.

It added that if hunger declines at the same rate as it did since 1992, more than 45 countries, including India, Pakistan, Haiti, Yemen, and Afghanistan, will still have ‘moderate’ to ‘alarming’ hunger scores in the year 2030, far short of the goal to end hunger by that year.

However, the report highlighted some bright spots, like 20 countries, including Rwanda, Cambodia, and Myanmar, who reduced their GHI scores by over 50 percent each since 2000 (India’s GHI score fell by 25.4 percent during this period), and the fact that no developing country for which data was available was in the “extremely alarming” category.

The GHI score is a multidimensional index composed of four indicators—proportion of undernourished in the population, and prevalence of child mortality, child stunting, and child wasting.

On the severity scale, a GHI score of less than 10 means “low” prevalence of hunger while a score of more than 50 implies an “extremely alarming” situation.