COVID-19 Crisis Wiped Out Decade Of Progress Fighting World Hunger - US State Dept.

WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th October, 2021) The coronavirus pandemic through 2020 and 2021 has set the world back at least ten years in the fight to eliminate hunger in the developing countries, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Lesley Ziman told a congressional hearing on Wednesday.

"A decade of progress against malnutrition has been erased," Ziman told a hearing of the US House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Relations Related Operations.

Subcommittee Chair Barbara Lee acknowledged what she called "the�crippling effect" that the pandemic had had on food security around the world and the still wide inequalities that existed in wealth in most countries.

The world was not yet lined up to take appropriate and sufficient coordinated actions to combat the pandemic and its destructive effects on global economies, US Agency for International Development (USAID) official Sarah Charles told the hearing.