Hunger Games: The Pandemic Within the Pandemic

The silent devastation of starvation

A famine of “biblical proportions” was how the chief of the World Food Programme (WFP) described the potential impacts of the food shortage crisis earlier this week.

While the focus on COVID-19 is on preventing deaths from the virus itself within more developed countries, another pandemic is building. The fighting over toilet paper and rice we’ve seen in supermarkets pale into insignificance when we take a look at food shortages in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Food crises in these regions aren’t a new problem. After all, that’s why such humanitarian organisations exist. But the coronavirus pandemic threatens to make the current period the “worst humanitarian crisis since World War Two.”

On Tuesday, the 2020 Global Report on Food Crises was published, placing the pandemic at the forefront of the agenda. It notes that, before the pandemic, 135 million people were estimated to suffer from food insecurity in 55 countries. That figure has now nearly doubled to 265 million, or roughly 80% of the US population.

These numbers get worse. 30 million people are dependent on the WFP for food every day. David Beasley, the head of WFP, said that if these people cannot be reached, 300,000 could starve each day over three months.

In highly vulnerable countries — like South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and the Congo — the dangers of violent conflict, economic collapse and climate change pose threats to everyday life, but coronavirus pushes them to the brink.

Years of fighting, unstable or non-existent governments and prolonged droughts have made regular access to food a rarity. Several countries highly reliant on agriculture have been hit with consecutive failed harvests, therefore struggling to provide enough food for subsistence let alone to make an income.

The economic implications are equally miserable. Typically, countries that rely on oil exports as a significant proportion of GDP are dependent on that income to fund food imports. The collapse of oil prices resulting from dwindling demand reduces the buying power of these countries, making them worryingly vulnerable.

In countries such as Ethiopia, where tourism accounts for many jobs and contributes significantly to the economy, unemployment levels are rising and tensions are building. A seemingly destructive cycle is occurring. Those living in poverty can’t afford to feed themselves or their loved ones, malnutrition then leads to a weakened immune system and a greater risk of developing severe coronavirus symptoms.

We’ve seen how many of the most advanced healthcare systems in the world have been overwhelmed by the virus, the under-resourced and limited health infrastructure of food-insecure countries would likely be decimated if waves of people were to catch it.

However, the risk of the disease spreading may be one that these nations have to take to ensure access to food. Shutting all major operations would limit income severely and imposing restrictions on travel, especially across borders, would prevent essential aid from reaching its final destination.

This places affected countries in a quandary. Allowing the movement of people to enable access to the vulnerable increases the risk of spreading the virus but preventing the movement could cause starvation on an unprecedented scale.

This is a sobering toss-up noted at the beginning of the Food Crisis Report:

“these countries may face an excruciating trade-off between saving lives or livelihoods, or, in a worst-case scenario, saving people from the coronavirus to have them die from hunger.”

WFP is pleading with global leaders to bring forward $2 billion dollars in aid to tackle the crisis head-on. This request is comparatively small when you consider how many people it can feed and how large some of the pandemic stimulus packages have been. But so far the response has been muted.

World-leading economies have been brought to a grinding halt, so the impacts on less developed countries are expected to be devastating. The economies are inextricably linked. Wealthy economies, via their respective national development agencies, collectively provide billions in aid each year.

But, aid payments are often tied to a percentage of annual national income. With widespread economic devastation predicted, potential aid funding may take a significant hit.

Understandably, and rightfully, governments’ main concerns are the health and safety of their own people during this pandemic. However, a global humanitarian response is essential to prevent potentially unimaginable consequences for millions “who are already hanging by a thread.”