11 million children under age 5 die from malnutrition and preventable diseases, each year

Hailey Ward
9/24/2010

According to UNICEF around twenty two thousand children die every day due to poverty. Having children die the poorest parts of the world in unnoticed by many people in the United States. Developing countries are struggling with underweight children. Almost twenty eight percent of children in developing countries are underweight or stunted in growth. Some surprising statistics; For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are: 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3); 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5); 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7). These statistics are alarming. Millions of children are dying every year while people in other countries are living more than comfortably. Out of these children 1.4 million die each year due to lack of safe drinking water and proper sanitation. As we discussed in class and this article as well, many people in developing countries are living on less than one dollar a day.

This is such as hard concept for many people to grasp. Millions of people, not only people, but innocent young children are dying every year because of lack of food and unsafe conditions. In the United States we are blind to the suffering of other individuals. We see infomercials on television and politely skip past them. We as a society do not want to face what is really happening in other parts of the world. We are barely concerned with what is happening in our own nation. The deaths of children in developing counties almost seem invisible. More attention needs to be paid to families in other parts of the world. It is embarrassing that we are letting so many children die each year because they do not have FOOD and WATER, two very important things that we take for granted every day.