ROME More than 800 million people, almost one in seven of the world's population, still suffer from hunger or diseases associated with undernourishment, AFP quoted the UN Food and Agriculture Organization as saying in its annual report published Friday.
Though the figure is well down from the 960 million estimated to be suffering from hunger 30 years ago, a backlog of unresolved problems remains amid new challenges, risks and uncertainties, said the report, entitled "The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA-2000)".
World hunger "has failed to attract the sustained attention it warrants," the Rome-based FAO stressed in the report.
According to authors Marcel Mazoyer, Michael Lipton, Robert Evenson and Pranab K. Bardhan, the eradication of hunger, though an arduous task, can be achieved.
In his introduction to the report, FAO Director General Jacques Diouf noted that the necessary techniques and resources are within reach.
"If we do not manage to eradicate hunger, the only excuse we will have before future generations will be that of ignorance, a lack of foresight and selfishness," he said.
The FAO report noted that present world food production is more than sufficient to feed the world's six billion inhabitants.
However, in developing and transitional countries, almost 1.2 billion people, about a quarter of the population, live on less than one dollar a day, with most of them, including children, having to work long hours at physically demanding jobs just to survive.