The UN’s World Food Pro­gram says that two mil­lion chil­dren are barely able to sur­vive in Bangladesh. The WFP wor­ries that another eco­nomic cri­sis could push more peo­ple in jeop­ardy, as the coun­try is starv­ing from the hikes in food prices last year, and the global recession.

From this AFP story that we found at The Raw Story we read more of the sit­u­a­tion in Bangladesh.

World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) coun­try head John Ayli­eff said two mil­lion chil­dren aged under five in Bangladesh are suf­fer­ing from acute mal­nu­tri­tion, which by World Health Orga­ni­za­tion stan­dards rep­re­sents a “nutri­tional emergency.”

“The pop­u­la­tion is beyond the razor’s edge, so that any other eco­nomic shock is going to have an imme­di­ate and direct impact on mal­nu­tri­tion,” Ayli­eff told AFP.

Bangladesh was cush­ioned from the worst rav­ages of the global finan­cial melt­down, but experts warn remit­tances and exports could be badly hit towards the end of this year.

In addi­tion, the WFP is fac­ing a global fund­ing cri­sis, rais­ing only 3.7 bil­lion of the 6.7 bil­lion dol­lars needed for its food assis­tance pro­grammes world­wide in 2009.

In Bangladesh, it had planned pro­grammes to help 6.9 mil­lion “com­pletely des­ti­tute” peo­ple this year, but Ayli­eff said four mil­lion fell through the fund­ing net.

“These are the bot­tom of the poverty scale. These are the ones micro-credit insti­tu­tions wouldn’t dream of look­ing at,” Ayli­eff said.

Food prices in Bangladesh almost dou­bled in 2008 after the country’s grain pro­duc­tion was dev­as­tated by major flood­ing and a cat­a­strophic cyclone the pre­vi­ous year, push­ing an extra 7.5 mil­lion peo­ple below the poverty line, accord­ing to the WFP.

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