The Starvelings: Hunger has an even bigger impact on children’s health than thought

Barbara Navarro/Jan. 25, 2007/ 4:50/ Heath issues

One of the children of Badaam died from tetanus. She is a woman who lives in the Indian province of Rajasthan. She has another who is weak from diarrhoea, caused probably by the custom of keeping mother and baby isolated of a month after birth. She is considered one of the lucky ones. A charity named Save the Children has been helping in keeping her family alive with food and nutritional advice.

Unicef, which is the United nations’ children’s agency, said this week that fewer than 1o million children died before their fifth birthday in the year 2006, which is probably the lowest rate ever, and definitely the lowest since records has began in 1960, when twice as many under-fives died, out of a world population half today’s level.

It is good news but it could be better. Malnutrition is by far the biggest factor to child mortality, in over half the cases of death in children, say the World Health Organization. New research in the Lancet, which is a British medical journal, thinks it is one of the biggest bills left to help take care of.

In One paper, written by Robert Black of John Hopkins University and others, says underweight births and inter-uterine growth restrictions cause 2.2 million child deaths a year (which totals around one every 15 seconds).

Hunger causes many diseases as well as death. Malnutrition is irreversible after the first two years. It is important to get to a child before this happens. Some of the reason for this happening comes from poor breast feeding. Lancet and Unicef is making efforts in teaching and giving advice in many areas. Breast feeding, food supplements, and better hygiene are areas of where help is needed. Money is a big issue in helping with these programs. Already there is quite a few dollars going in to these areas of need.

Focusing on nutrition and mortality also makes sense, say April Harding of the Centre for Global Development, Washington-based think tank, these forces policymakers to pay close attention to health in the view as a whole and not to focus just in one disease at a time.

I think it is a sad thing that so many are in serious need of health care and food. Many of us really don’t sit and think how we are blessed with programs that help. Even here in the U.S. we are faced with many health and nutrition problems. With jobs on the incline this problem to me will become even more of an issue here in the United States. Will they come up with a plan that will benefit the whole? It would be nice if they could. I feel there will be many sacrifices if they do. What areas will this affect us? What changes would we have to make in our lives and what would we have to give up for this to happen. Without getting into a deeper subject here, I personally feel a lot of our independence will be taken away to make some of these changes. It might make things better for a time period, but in the long run what will the side effects be?
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10566634