The anti-poverty organisation Oxfam says 11 people die of hunger each minute and that the number facing famine-like conditions around the globe has increased six times over the last year.
In the report titled “The Hunger Virus Multiplies,” Oxfam said Thursday that the death toll from famine outpaces that of COVID-19, which kills around seven people per minute.
Oxfam America’s President and CEO Abby Maxman said “The statistics are staggering, but we must remember that these figures are made up of individual people facing unimaginable suffering. Even one person is too many.”
The humanitarian group also said that 155 million people around the world now live at crisis levels of food insecurity or worse some 20 million more than last year. Around two-thirds of them face hunger because their country is in military conflict.
Maxman further added, due to the COVID-19 economic fallout, and a worsening climate crisis, has pushed more than 520,000 people to the brink of starvation.
