What
is not so obvious, however, is the scale of the threat, let alone the long-term
consequences.
In
moving from the obvious to the not so obvious we discover that worldwide,
nearly one billion people live in a state of chronic hunger. This means that 1
of every 7 of us is going to bed hungry tonight. Narrow the geographic scope a
bit and you find, in sub-Saharan Africa for example, that 1 in every 4, or 240
million people, will go to bed hungry tonight.
Focus
on the plight of children in the developing world for a moment and we discover a
very sobering fact. Hungry, undernourished children will account for at least
half of the 10 million child deaths worldwide this year.
Mothers
are not spared the suffering of their children. While women make up just over
half of the world’s population, they account for more than 60 per cent of the 1
billion hungry people in the world today.
What
happens to mothers happens to their children. Mothers who are undernourished often
give birth to underweight babies. These babies are 20 percent more likely to
die before the age of five. And when we consider that as many as 17 million
children are born underweight every year, the consequences come into sharp
focus.
Drilling
down a bit deeper, we find that chronically undernourished children suffer up to
160 days of illness annually. Their bodies, beaten down by hunger, are simply
unable to cope with the relentless assault of poverty.
Delving
a bit deeper still, we see tangible evidence of the long-term ramifications of
hunger in that more than 178 million children under the age of 5 are well below
the average height for their age - their growth stunted by chronic hunger and undernourishment.
Without
taking anything away from the tragedy that is the short-term consequences of
hunger, the long-term consequences are equally troubling. Hunger impairs
learning and human development in all age groups. It feeds hopelessness, and it
enables a status quo that no person of conscience can abide.
In
essence, hunger threatens the present and robs from the future.
Even
economies are negatively impacted by hunger. In countries with elevated levels
of child undernourishment, the loss, in economic terms, can be as high as 3 percent of gross domestic product.
You
know the situation is well beyond tragic and well within the realm of the unconscionable
when the number of people killed by hunger worldwide pales in comparison to the
number of people who survive but remain in a state of chronic hunger and risk.
Next week... Hunger Rarely Shows Up Uninvited
