Update: COVID-19 & Hunger

The Growing Global Hunger Pandemic

For many parts of the world, the global COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. The effects have been devastating, pushing more families into poverty, and causing the ongoing hunger crisis to rise into its own pandemic. This global hunger pandemic is now threatening millions of lives.

Fast Facts

• An additional 88 to 115 million people globally were pushed into extreme poverty this year.
• 270 million people are facing acute hunger now, an 82% increase since 2019.
• 11 million children under the age of 5 are threatened by extreme hunger
• Nearly 170,000 will die of malnutrition by the end of 2022 without emergency intervention

Families and communities around the world are caught between two pandemics.

We have all been witness to the devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic. For those who have survived this pandemic and have their health, so much has still been lost: jobs, homes, financial security, and much more. For families already living in poverty, the situation is turning far worse as the global hunger pandemic threatens to starve millions and overshadow the destruction that the virus has caused.

Hunger was already on the rise in many countries before the pandemic struck. Nearly half of all deaths in children under age five were already caused by undernutrition. In 2019, 21 per cent of these young kids experiencing stunted growth, and almost 50 million children having low weight for their height, also known as “wasting.”

Now, COVID-19 and the response to it have crashed economies and left the most vulnerable without the critical support they need to survive a hunger crisis like this.

This is where you are making a difference through ADRA. 

Keeping people from going hungry and having access to proper nutrition is part of ADRA’s ongoing global response to the COVID-19 crisis. There’s more to our emergency response than the kind of food distributions that may come to mind when you think of feeding people in an emergency.

Providing one-off solutions isn’t enough to battle a global hunger pandemic. We are ensuring that sustainable solutions are created for long-term benefits so that more communities are nourished through our projects. The COVID-19 pandemic will impact countless people for the years to come  

A phrase we use a lot in our work is food security. When someone has food security, it means they have consistent access to enough of the food they need for a healthy life. Ensuring food security for the people we serve includes making sure that they aren’t just fed but are also nourished with the nutrition that we all require to be healthy. 

The needs are different from country to country and community to community but thanks to supporters like you, ADRA can work with those we serve to make sure they not only have the urgent food relief they need now, but they also have the resources to stay healthy into the future.

Here are just a few small examples of how we are continuing to expand our work to meet the specific needs of communities around the world:

• In the United States, ADRA funded an expansion of 200 food pantries in partnership with Adventist Community Services. 
• In Brazil, ADRA volunteers are a welcome part of communities where they help families who have lost their jobs and income to COVID-19.
• In Madagascar, ADRA is teaching people how to plant gardens that will provide both nutrition and income to their families and communities.

This global hunger pandemic has the potential to take more lives and destroy more families than COVID-19. Without the support of people like you, our worst-case scenario will come true.