World failing to reduce hunger

Experts predict that it could take a century to meet the target if progress were to continue at the current rate.

Jacques Diouf, the director general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said that progress had "virtually ground to a halt" in the past year.

It is estimated that 25,000 people a day die as a result of hunger and poverty.

Each year, six million children under the age of five are affected.

The target of cutting the number of hungry in half by 2015 was set in 1996, and the FAO calculates that the total should fall by at least 24 million a year in order to meet it.

However, this would require the progress between 1992 and 2000 to not only be matched in future but increased tenfold.

Billions pumped in

The UN has set up an anti-hunger programme which aims to increase investment in developing countries by $24bn a year.

The latest estimate is that in 1998-2000 there were 840 million undernourished people in the world, including 799 million in developing countries.

This is actually more than the previous estimate.

Most of the increase took place in central Africa, driven by warfare in a single country, DR Congo, which has an estimated 36.4 million undernourished citizens.

The biggest improvement took place in China, which relieved hunger for 74 million. South-east Asia saw most of the major success stories, with malnutrition cut dramatically in Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand.

In Africa, Nigeria and Ghana recorded significant falls in malnutrition.

'Far too slow'

Mr Diouf said: "If we continue at the current pace, we will reach the goal more than 100 years late, closer to the year 2150 than to the year 2015."

The report also highlights a separate, and more pervasive, problem dubbed "hidden hunger".

Even though people who suffer it may not be technically malnourished, they lack vital nutrients in their diet and their health suffers as a result.

Up to two billion people are said to be vulnerable to this.

Women and children are particularly hard hit, says the report - for example, up to 140 million children risk sight problems because they do not have enough vitamin A in their diets.