Malnutrition costs mankind $3.5tr annually

Dubai: Two billion people suffer from one or more micronutrient deficiencies, while 1.4 billion are overweight, of whom 500 million are obese, according to a latest report by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), released on June 4.

Twenty-six per cent of children under five are stunted and 31 per cent suffer from vitamin A deficiency, FAO said in its annual report The State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA). The report noted that although some 870 million people were still hungry worldwide in 2010-2012, this is just a fraction of the billions of people whose health, wellbeing and lives are blighted by malnutrition.

The cost of malnutrition to the global economy in lost productivity and health care costs is "unacceptably high" and could account for as much as 5 per cent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) $3.5 trillion (Dh12.8 trillion), or $500 per person. That is almost the entire annual GDP of Germany, Europe’s largest economy.

José Graziano da Silva, FAO Director-General, called for resolute efforts to eradicate malnutrition as well as hunger from around the world. "As the world debates the Post-2015 Development Agenda, we must strive for nothing less than the eradication of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition. The social and economic costs of malnutrition are unconscionably high," he said.

Global estimates

The costs of undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies are estimated at 2–3 per cent of global GDP, equivalent to $1.4–$2.1 trillion per year.

Although no global estimates of the economic costs of overweight and obesity exist, the cumulative cost of all non-communicable diseases, for which overweight and obesity are leading risk factors, were estimated to be about $1.4 trillion.

A recent study estimates a cumulative output loss due to non-communicable diseases, for which overweight and obesity are key risk factors, of $47 trillion over the next two decades.