Coronavirus may spark 'hunger pandemic' pushing millions into starvation

New York: David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), of the United Nations (UN), issued a severe warning as he said, ‘Global hunger has become more daunting given the Coronavirus pandemic. If timely steps are not initiated, the starvation crisis will assume biblical proportions. The hunger pandemic will claim more lives in the world than the Coronavirus pandemic.’ WFP Executive Director warned during the UN Security Council meeting that the Coronavirus pandemic had initiated a chain of future crisis for the world.

More than 180 countries in the world are under lockdown to contain the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic. Lockdown has directly affected the economies of the states, and the lengthening shadows of recession will squeeze the poor in these countries, Beasley said at the UN Security Council meeting. Beasley drew attention to the disproportionately rising unemployment, because of the lockdown and the loss of wages for all the daily wage workers. Beasley went on to underscore that the world awaited a deadly crisis.

Even before the Novel Coronavirus, 820 million people in the world were starved. The starvation crisis for 135 million people was already a grave challenge. Out of these, 100 million people were fed by the WFP. Yet, 30 million people in the world were faced with starvation. However, the number of people facing starvation will double after the Coronavirus pandemic, Beasley stated as he highlighted the stark reality.

Beasley has thus warned that timely efforts were necessary to combat the starvation crisis awaiting the world or else more people would die in the hunger pandemic because of the lockdown as compared to the Coronavirus pandemic. Meanwhile, David Beasley, Executive Director of the WFP, was revealed to have contracted the Coronavirus infection.