IFPRA’s World Hunger Index: Bangladesh’s Great Progress in Hunger-free Fighting
By Adnan Mahfuz
This year, Bangladesh ranks 75th among 107 countries in the world hunger index. Last year, Bangladesh was ranked 88th out of 117 countries.
Bangladesh has made great strides in the fight against hunger in the last one year as continuous progress has been made in reducing the rate of malnutrition.
According to the International Food Policy Research Institute’s “World Hunger Index” released this year on Friday (October 16th), Bangladesh is ranked 75th out of 107 countries. Last year, Bangladesh was ranked 88th out of 117 countries in this index. In the previous three years, Bangladesh was ranked 86th, 88th, and 90th, respectively.
Not only progress in the index’s position, but also in all the four criteria by which the Global Hunger Index (GHI) is judged, Bangladesh has advanced compared to last time.
GHI is created by judging each country’s situation based on the malnutrition rate, an underweight child under five years of age, and an infant mortality rate under five years.
Each country’s score is calculated based on 100 points. The best score on the index is zero. If the score increases, it should be understood that the situation in that country is getting worse in the state of hunger. And a low score means that the food and nutrition situation in that country is improving.
According to the International Food Policy Research Institute, Bangladesh has improved a lot in terms of score in the last year. The total score has decreased from 25.8 last time to 20.4. As a result, Bangladesh’s position in the overall index has jumped 13 steps.
GHI: Score of Bangladesh
Year 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Score 52.2 50.3 36.1 30.7 30.3 27.3 27.1 26.5 26.1 25.6 20.4
According to the definition set by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, when a child’s daily nutritional intake is less than 1,600 kcal, it is defined as hunger.
According to the Hunger Index, 13% of Bangladesh’s total population is malnourished; Children under the age of five weigh less than the height of 9.8%; of those children, 28% had a lower age-to-child ratio, and 3% had an under-five mortality rate.
Last year, the rates in these four cases were 14.7%, 14.4%, 36.2% and 3.2%, respectively.
Bangladesh has been ahead of India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan in this index for the last few years. However, it is still lagging behind Nepal and Sri Lanka.
