Hunger and malnutrition are killing nearly six million children each year, a Food and Agriculture Organization says. This figure roughly equals the entire pre-school population of a large country such as Japan.

A recent Unicef report showed that the annual number of babies saved by breastfeeding is of six millions, which means that, overall, there hasn't been any reduction of the mortality rate among infants.

This shocking death toll is the result of a handful of treatable infectious diseases including diarrhea, pneumonia, malaria and measles.

According to the statistic, hunger and malnutrition, which weaken the immune systems paving the way for the diseases, are among the root causes of poverty, illiteracy, disease and mortality of millions of people in developing countries.

"Progress towards reducing the number of hungry people in developing countries by half by 2015 has been very slow and the international community is far from reaching its hunger reduction targets", wrote FAO General Manager Dr Jacques Diouf.

Around 75 percent of the world's hungry and deprived people live in rural areas in poor countries. These regions are home to the vast majority of the nearly 11 million children who die before reaching the age of five, including 8 million infants, and of the 530 000 women who die during pregnancy and childbirth.