Foreign Affairs: The Pandemic Has Made Hunger Even More Urgent to Address
Sara Bleich, professor of public health policy at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health, and Sheila Fleischhacker, adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center

“…The enormous health and social costs of food insecurity make it one of the most pressing global health problems of the twenty-first century. … Policymakers around the world must act to prevent food insecurity from making the COVID-19 pandemic even more devastating than it already has been. … The focus should therefore be on sustainable, scalable, and equitable policies that reduce hunger and help those who the pandemic has most adversely affected. Efforts to redress food insecurity must not stigmatize the people who receive assistance. Rather, policymakers should promote equal access to food … To date, COVID-19 has killed more than a million people worldwide and helped produce a profound global hunger crisis. The world needs a dramatic, coordinated effort to address food insecurity. Without one, it will not likely achieve the Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. Worse, it will witness death and disease on an unimaginable scale, especially among its poorest, who also experience the most hunger and diet-related disease. The good news is that hunger is preventable. But only if those who can act, do — together” (11/4).