World Hunger Day on May 28:

Feeding the hungry

By Carol Aloysius

Razia a young African woman sits on the doorway of her crumbling shack embracing the emaciated body of her three year old son. If she does not find food for his starving body which has survived on one crust of bread and a cup of weak tea for the past six days, she knows her son will die before the break of another dawn, just like her other two children, who also died of acute malnutrition and dehydration.

She would then no longer have to trudge long miles in search of food in her drought stricken village fight, but instead simply sit at the entrance of her home waiting to die like her children and her elderly parents did.

In another village close by, the scent of death has beckoned hundreds of vultures who circle the skies waiting for people in this drought ridden and war torn village to die, so that they can swoop down and rip their starved carcases apart for their next meal.

These scenes reverberate in most poverty stricken regions where people have little or no access to food and water, especially in times of drought, floods, and displacement due to war. Most families, as in the case of Razia, survive on a single cup of plain tea and a crust of bread for the day, when prolonged drought has parched their crops and dried up their wells leaving their once flourishing paddy fields and corn fields barren.

In Rajasthan where periodic droughts occur, Shantidevi aged 75 the only surviving member of her family of five, sits under a gnarled old tree already withering at its roots, waiting for death. Most of her relatives have left the village to look for food and water elsewhere, but the old woman preferred to remain pleading her frail starved body could not endure the long walk under a blazing sun.

She said she would rather die in the village she grew up in, married and became a wife and grandmother. Around her the air is thick with the smell of death as bodies of children, men and women who have died from hunger lie in shallow graves.

Malnutrition

Food: With world population at a staggering seven billion, finding enough food to feed this enormous growing population is perhaps one of the most important challenges that face mankind’s survival today. The Zero Hunger Challenge, launched by the UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon, has already galvanised global support around this very objective. For, as we all know, insufficient food will result in malnutrition and a host of attendant health problems. Today, as a result of food scarcities, malnutrition has cut across every border, spreading its tentacles to even the so called affluent countries where hungry people living under bridges and cardboard boxes queue up at charity run soup kitchens for their only meal for the day.

Recent statistics compiled by various UN organisations on the number of people who go to bed each night without food is mind boggling. In its 2013 report, the Food & Agricultural Organisation (FAO) puts the number at one in eight persons, while 842 million don’t eat enough to be healthy.

Since poverty, drought, floods are closely associated with under nutrition and malnutrition, it is not surprising that the vast majority of hungry people living in developing countries in southern Asia, followed by Sub Saharan Africa and Eastern Asia. By 2050, climate change and erratic weather patterns could have pushed another 24 million children into hunger. Almost half of these children would be in sub-Saharan Africa, adds another study. (Source: IFPRI, 2009).

Children most at risk

The most vulnerable and visible victims of this vicious cycle of poverty, climatic changes and natural disasters, are predictably, children. Latest figures indicate that every three seconds a child dies of hunger. Unable to withstand the onslaughts of hunger, their frail immature bodies often succumb to the common fallouts of malnutrition - life long physical and mental impairments, that finally end in premature deaths. Recent studies clearly indicate the extent of the problem.

For example, in its damning report of 2011, the UN Inter-agency group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME), formed for the specific purpose of sharing data on child mortality worldwide, states that a third of all deaths in children under the age of five in developing countries are linked to under nutrition. The medical journal, The Lancet of 2013 states that in the developing world, one child in four is stunted, due to their impaired physical and mental growth because of inadequate nutrition.

These adverse impacts of under nutrition don’t begin after birth. They begin while the child is still in its mother’s womb and continue during early childhood. As the IGME report says, the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, from pregnancy through age two, are critical. A proper diet in this period can protect children from the mental and physical stunting that can result from malnutrition. Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year.

Poor nutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year - five million deaths. Under nutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria, reducing the body’s ability to convert food into usable nutrients.

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has not escaped the spectre of malnutrition either. With a large number of people still living below the poverty line and the rise in living costs, malnutrition and anaemia are reportedly high in certain sections of the population, such as women and children living on tea estates and those whose crops are constantly being destroyed in chena cultivation. But there is a difference between them and their counterparts in African nations and Northern India living in drought stricken villages.

For most Sri Lankans who are said to be of low birth weight, malnourished and anaemic, do have access to healthy diets. The problem is that most of them don’t know where to look for them. The responsibility lies with their community leaders, public health inspectors, midwives and others looking after their welfare. They must take the time and trouble to explain to them ways in which they can easily cook a low cost meal on their shoe string budgets, full of nutrients and vitamins to keep them strong and fill their stomach, simply by growing plants and fruits in their back gardens.

Endorsing the view of FAO, that hunger and malnutrition is not always the result of food scarcities the Medical Research Institute ( MRI) in Sri Lanka, has reportedly found in a recent study that 16.2% young mothers , 15%children under five and 34% infants between six months to one year with anaemia and malnutrition in Sri Lanka. According to a Health Ministry spokesman the main reason for this lay in unhealthy food patterns and food preparations and the reluctance of children to eat freely available green leaves, vegetables and fruits.

The Health Ministry now has a special unit that looks after their nutritional needs, gives them subsidised meals, free vitamins and a cup of thriposha. Also heartening are reports that our long suffering farming community whose crops have been destroyed by droughts and heavy rains during the harvesting period, and whose lands have been encroached upon over the years, in the name of development, are now being given a much needed helping hand by Farmers Clubs and other voluntary organisations to obtain raise low interest loans and engage in alternative agriculture.

Fighting the spectre of hunger

Does the world produce enough food to feed everyone? FAO experts say, the world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase- enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilo-calories (kcal) per person per day 

The principal problem is that many people in the world do not have sufficient land to grow, or income to purchase, enough food. 

So what is the solution? A few UN agencies and other interested organisations have come up with the following suggestions we now share with our readers:

1. Empowering women with equal access to resources.

Why women you may ask. Because there is a direct correlation with hunger and gender inequalities. Empowering women who comprise half the world’s population, to gain access to food, be providers, and lead their families has already had a major impact on food access and ability to change financial situations.

Food and Agriculture Organisation states in its 2011 report that if women farmers had the same access to resources as men, the number of hungry in the world could be reduced by up to 150 million.

2) Educate women birth control

Proponents of this argument say that since having too many children too soon and too early can aggravate mothers on the brink of malnutrition, educating them on birth control could also prevent malnutrition - and hunger. High birthrates pose a problem when trying to solve hunger. Many people are not educated on reproduction or do not have access to contraceptives. It has been argued that gaining access to contraceptives allows for family planning and economic freedom.

3) Donate a few dollars to ensure a child in a poor country gets the nutrients and vitamins he/she needs to give him/her a healthy start to life.

This suggestion, made by the World Food Program has been taken up with enthusiasm by a number of organisations. “It costs just US $0.25 per day to provide a hungry child with all of the vitamins and nutrients he or she needs to grow up healthy”, it states in its 2011 report.

Recent studies have revealed that such donations both cash and food have had an immense impact on world hunger. For example, organisations such as Food for All have customers donate $1-5 when checking out. Last year they raised a whopping $60 to fight world hunger.

Yet another suggestion is to help people to help themselves by encouraging them to learn trades that will give them jobs to break the cycle of poverty. Heifer International has done just that by helping to transform agriculture.

They fund projects so people can provide food for themselves in a sustainable way.

The Organisation is convinced that when impoverished areas are no longer reliant on aid from foreign countries (which often causes debt), they would be able to create their own, steady, supply of food.

Political will

However practical or impractical these suggestions may be, the key to finding a lasting solution to this war on hunger will eventually lie largely on the extent of commitment to all programs directed towards eliminating hunger - both to implement them and to sustain them. If that can be achieved it may still be possible to look forward to what the UN General Secretary calls,” a hunger free world in our lifetime”.