“India’s 2017 GHI score is at the high end category of the serious category,” the report said.
The International Food Policy Research Institute on Thursday published their 2017 Global Hunger Index (GHI) in which India ranked 100th among 119 developing countries with serious hunger problem.
India was placed 97th in the last year’s GHI and this year’s result suggests that one-fifth to one-quarter of the children under five weigh too little for their height due to nutritional deficiencies, IFPRI’s report read.
The country stands behind Bangladesh, Nepal, Iraq and North Korea with 31.4 scores and has the third highest Global Hunger Index score in all of Asia. Pakistan has been ranked 106th and Afghanistan is at 107th place.
“India’s 2017 GHI score is at the high end category of the serious category,” the report said.
However, the country made some improvement in the areas such as the still relatively high child stunting rate that has come down by 29 percent, since the year 2000. Currently, child stunting rate is about 38.4 percent.
“The results of this year’s Global Hunger Index show that we cannot waiver in our resolve to reach the UN Sustainable Development Goal of zero hunger by 2030,” Shenggen Fan, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute said in a statement.
“We have made great progress toward that goal but indications that this progress is threatened emphasizes the need to establish resilience in food systems. We must provide immediate aid to those areas facing the most severe crises, such as famines, and construct policies at the international and national levels to address the structural issues that create persistent food insecurity,” he said.
The 2017 GHI is jointly published by the IFPRI, Concern Worldwide, and Welthungerhilfe and it tracks the state of hunger worldwide, spotlighting those places where action to address hunger is most urgently needed.
The Central African Republic has the highest GHI score and it has been categorized as “extremely alarming” followed by Chad, Sierra Leone, Madagascar and Zambia. According to the report, countries such as China, Peru, Brazil, Panama and Azerbaijan have made significant improvements and the level of hunger in developing countries decreased by 27 percent, since 2000.