You won't believe which country has beaten India on the GHI

This picture has been used for representational purposes only.

Ireland's Concern Worldwide and Germany's Welthungerhilfe jointly published a report on global hunger and malnutrition, in which India is ranked one of the lowest in the world. India ranks a lowly 102 out of 117 countries on the list lagging behind Pakistan, which ranks slightly better at the 94th position.

The report ranks the countries on a 100-point "severity scale" and India has been given a score of 30.3 which is serious. Another alarming statistic mentioned in the report is that in India just 9.6 per cent of children between 6 and 23 months of age are fed a minimum acceptable diet. "Because of its large population, India's GHI indicator values have an outsized impact on the indicator values for the region. India's child wasting rate is extremely high at 20.8 per cent - the highest wasting rate of any country in this report for which data or estimates were available. Its child stunting rate, 37.9 per cent, is also categorised as very high in terms of its public health significance (de Onis et al. 2019)," the report further stated.

Read the full report

Some countries did not make it to the list of 117 countries because there wasn't enough data. Also, the first rank has been shared by 17 countries - all of whom had a severity rating of less than 5.

The Top 17 Countries

• Belarus (<5)
• Bosnia & Herzegovina (<5)
• Bulgaria (<5)
• Chile (<5)
• Costa Rica (<5)
• Croatia (<5)
• Cuba (<5)
• Estonia (<5)
• Kuwait (<5)
• Latvia (<5)
• Lithuania (<5)
• Montenegro (<5)
• Romania (<5)
• Slovak Republic (<5)
• Turkey (<5)
• Ukraine (<5)
• Uruguay (<5)

The Worst 5 Countries

• India (30.3)
• Madagascar (41.5)
• Chad (44.2)
• Yemen, Rep. (45.9)
• Central African Republic (53.6)

It's high time that we wake up to this menace and take active steps to fight it. There are several NGOs which are working tirelessly to help fight hunger and with as little as Rs. 750, you can feed a child for an entire year.

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