Bangladesh improves on Global Hunger Index 2022
Bangladesh has been showing steady progress in the past decades and is now considered as 'moderate'
Highlights:
- Bangladesh has shown significant improvement of 25.5% from 2014 when its GHI score was 26.3
- Since 2014, its rates of undernourishment, child stunting, and child mortality have all declined
- Child wasting, which was rated high in previous years, has also dropped to a current level of 9.8% from 14.4% in 2014
Bangladesh's score of 19.6 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022 falls into the moderate category, placing it at 84th out of the 121 countries taken into consideration.
The country shows visible improvement from the past years.
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Bangladesh has shown significant improvement of 25.5% from 2014 when its GHI score was 26.3, considered serious, reads a press release.
Since 2014, its rates of undernourishment, child stunting, and child mortality have all declined. Child wasting, which was rated high in previous years, has also dropped to a current level of 9.8%, compared to 14.4% in 2014.
The country's steady decline in child stunting in recent decades is still a remarkable success and can be attributed to rising household economic development due to pro-poor economic growth, gains in parental education and improving health, sanitation and demographic factors, although the current child stunting level at 28.0% is still defined as high for public health significance.
Although the country's trend has improved over time, the climate crisis is becoming an increasing threat to food and nutrition security due to rising sea levels, extreme weather conditions, and devastating floods.
These factors combined with existing challenges such as poverty and inequality mean that it is often the poorest sections of society, already suffering from hunger and poverty, that are worst affected.
The Global Hunger Index 2022 was launched in the presence of Chief Guest Adv Md Kamrul Islam MP, chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Agriculture, at Krishibid Institution of Bangladesh (KIB).
The event was also graced by special guests Badal Chandra Biswas, director general, Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), Dr Hasan Shahriar Kabir, director general, Bangladesh National Nutrition Council (BNNC) and Dr Shaikh Mohammad Bokhtiar, executive chairman, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC).
Globally, Yemen has the highest GHI score (reflecting the highest hunger level) of any country, ranked with sufficient data, in the report and is in the Index's alarming category.
The GHI, now in its 17th year, ranks countries based on four key indicators: undernourishment, child stunting, child wasting, and child mortality. The 2022 report ranked 121 countries, 44 of which have serious, or alarming hunger levels.
