Section General Health Care (SGHC) that falls under Collective Prevention Services (CPS) from the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour, says nations around the globe on Wednesday, 16 October, observed World Food Day (WFD) under the theme: "Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition."
The objective of the day is to raise awareness in connection with healthy people depend on healthy food systems. The observance also ties in with CPS annual calendar of health awareness.
As part of the Minister’s ‘Get Checked,’ campaign, De Weever is calling on civil society to pay more attention to nutrition and how they can work on improving their intake of nutritional foods and a healthy lifestyle.
The objective of World Food Day is to also encourage attention to agricultural food production and to stimulate national, bilateral, multilateral and non-governmental efforts to this end; as well as heighten public awareness of the problem of hunger in the world.
The Committee on World Food Security, the world’s most important intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder platform for food security and nutrition, opened its 40th session at the Food Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Italy, amid urgent calls to build more effective links between international policies and the daily needs of millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.
The latest estimates signal there are nearly 30 million less hungry people in the world in 2013 compared to last year, according to the FAO. Progress continues to be made towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal hunger target of reducing by half the proportion of the undernourished population between 1990 and 2015.
The report, the State of Food Insecurity in the World, estimates that 842 million people globally suffered from chronic hunger in 2011-13. This figure is down from 868 million during the 2010-12, and represents a decline of 17 per cent since 1990-92.
About 75 per cent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and mainly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
The lead organization that develops the official theme at the start of every year is the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
PHOTO CUTLINE: Minister of Public Health Hon. Cornelius de Weever