Hunger, maternal deaths and stillbirths have soared during the pandemic. A woman with her twins in a health clinic in South Sudan, where tens of thousands of people are suffering famine.Credit...Sam Mednick/Associated Press May 5, 2021, 2:24 p.m. ET The pandemic has contributed to soaring hunger and acute declines in maternal health care that threaten tens of millions of people, the United Nations said Wednesday, underscoring the disproportionate spillover effects on the world’s poor. The number of people worldwide requiring urgent food aid hit a five-year high in 2020 — reaching at least 155 million — while the risk of maternal and newborn deaths surged because of a shortage of at least 900,000 midwives, or one-third of the required global midwifery work force, the United Nations said in a pair of reports produced with other groups.