Coronavirus and crisis: humanity can face biblical famine through a pandemic

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Humanity can cope with a “biblical scale” famine through a coronavirus pandemic if it does not provide food security.

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This was stated by the Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) – Ed. David Beazley.

According to WFP, 265 million people may be facing a severe food shortage by the end of 2020. This is double that of last year: 130 million people were on the verge of starvation due to a coronavirus. According to Arif Hussein, a leading program economist, the self-isolation and economic recession regime has already affected residents of hungry countries.

First of all, we are talking about countries in Africa where half of the hungry people live. Another 43 million hungry people live in the Middle East and Asia. 18.5 million in the Caribbean and Latin America.

The authors of the report of the World Food Crisis Network (which includes WFP) are also concerned about the situation in south-eastern Ukraine.

Beasley called the coronavirus pandemic “the worst humanitarian crisis since World War II.” According to him, without the help of WFP, “300,000 people will starve every day and for three months.” Beasley added that these figures do not take into account the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to one of the program’s scenarios, the famine will spread in 30 countries. Ten of them are already on the verge of starvation.

As RBC recalls, in early April, the UN reported that 8.3 million people in the Arab region would be below the poverty line due to the coronavirus, and the number of people receiving food would increase by 2 million, with more than 101 million in Arab countries. people are below the poverty line and 52 million are malnourished.

According to UNIAN, the IMF said that developing countries may be the most affected by the coronavirus pandemic, and the general standard of living will fall in 170 countries.