Over a billion people will go to bed hungry tonight by Oxfam, Save the Children & agencies 11:30pm 27th Jul, 2012   Key commodities such as corn and soya have hit record prices following the worst drought in the US in more than a century. Crop failures and rising fuel costs are pricing millions out of buying food, making it harder for parents to feed their children properly.    A study published last week by Save the Children said the number of children experiencing hunger and malnutrition had risen for the first time in a decade. Malnutrition is the underlying cause of death for 2.6 million children each year. In the past 10 years, the charity says, the world has made progress on reducing poverty and infant mortality, and providing education, but little or no progress has been made on malnutrition.    Unicef called for action to address stunting – deprivation from essential nutrients in the first 1,000 days of a child"s life, a critical period for the development of their bodies and brains.    Duncan Green from Oxfam says an approach to ending hunger is about finding long-term solutions to feeding the planet without destroying it. In a world that produces enough food to feed everyone, one in seven of us goes to bed hungry.    In Yemen, the number of food-insecure people has doubled since 2009, and in west Africa, more than 18 million people are at risk. The crises are cyclical and deepening – this is a systemic issue, not a one-off.    We need a genuine effort to tackle the global storm of climate change, pressures on land and water, high and erratic food prices, and rising consumption.    The state has a crucial role in regulating private sector behaviour, as well as a hands-on role in agricultural development.    NGOs are looking for concrete commitments in several areas: putting a stop to the spate of land "grabs" in poor countries by large international companies lured by high commodity prices and the prospect of future scarcity; tackling the perverse impact of biofuels, which in the name of rich-world energy security are ousting hundreds of thousands of small farmers from their land, deepening poverty and hunger; greater investment in the 500m small farms that 2 billion of the world"s more vulnerable people rely on for their sustenance, and reforming an international tax system that allows western tax havens to actively encourage capital flight and tax evasion, sucking billions of dollars out of poor countries economies.    Aug 2012    An unparalleled number of severe food shortages has added 43 million to the number of people going hungry worldwide this year. And millions of children are now at risk of acute malnutrition, humanitarian agencies are warning.    For the first time in recent history, humanitarian organisations have had to respond to three serious food crises – in West Africa, Yemen and East Africa – in the past 12 months, according to Oxfam. Almost a billion people are now hungry – one in seven of the global population – and the number of acutely malnourished children has risen for the first time this decade.    But these issues are well known. When the hunger crisis hit the headlines last year, it was only after famine had already been declared in Somalia, killing an estimated 100,000 people and affecting over 12 million. Needless deaths occurred and millions of extra dollars were spent simply because the international community had failed to act on early warnings. Currently in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa, more than 18 million people are threatened by food shortages.    Humanitarian aid agencies are urging actions to reduce the number of under-fives– currently at least 180 million – who suffer from irreversible physical and mental stunting as a result of poor nutrition. More than two and a half million children die from malnutrition each year.    Barbara Stocking, Oxfam GB"s chief executive: "We need concerted action to address the shocking fact that while we produce enough food to feed everyone on the planet, about a billion will tonight go to bed hungry.    "Dwindling natural resources and the gathering pace of climate change mean that without urgent action, things will only get worse, and multiple major crises could quickly move from being an exception to being the norm."    She called for increased investment in small farmers, greater transparency in commodity markets and an end to biofuel subsidies.    If the world failed to listen when charities warned about the food crisis in the Horn of Africa, experts say they must pay attention when it comes to the Sahel. Millions of people are already facing severe food insecurity in the region, and more than a million children are at risk of severe malnutrition.    Cycles of drought combined with low levels of agricultural investment, environmental degradation, high population growth and acute levels of poverty contribute to a context of "chronic" vulnerability, according to Oxfam. Conflict in Mali and high food prices – across the region - food prices are higher by on average 25 to 50 per cent compared with the last five-year average – have exacerbated the crisis. Oxfam has launched an appeal and is aiming to reach 1.8 million people with emergency assistance across Senegal, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Gambia.    Justin Forsyth, chief executive of Save the Children, said the region was in a "permanent food crisis". He added: "One bad year tips families over the edge, and the world responds to the emergency, but this is the tip of the iceberg. Below the surface, there is a huge ongoing crisis we don"t address."    Unicef said that lack of nutrition is the "silent challenge" to global development. In 2008, eight of world"s leading economists, including five Nobel laureates, ranked providing young children with micronutrients as the most cost-effective way to advance global welfare.    Assan Adaman, a 33-year-old mother of six, has lived in the same village in Kédougou, Senegal, all her life. A rice farmer, she is used to producing six bags in a good season; last year, production levels were cut in half. As she runs low on food, she is worried about the next few months and how she will ensure her children have enough to eat.    "I grew rice last year, but three bags is not enough to feed my family. I"m really worried about how I will feed them over the next few months, as we approach a bad period. I can"t be calm when my children do not have enough to eat; I have to keep them healthy. We have to rely on our neighbours and our communities to help us through these harder times. "When I receive Oxfam money, I will be able to give my children food. But I hope that the future will change for my children when they grow up."    Aissatou Kanle is a 40-year-old father of eight, living in Kédougou. He is a maize and rice farmer by trade but now works as a miner – a six-hour round trip from home – to feed his family, which he has left behind.    "Last year the maize was destroyed by floods, then rain destroyed my rice harvest. So, over the last year, I didn"t have enough rice or maize to sell or for my family to eat... I had to go and find work in the mines, so I could raise money to give to my wife to provide for my family. I had to walk three hours there and back with very little food inside me.    "The future for my family is education. I can"t just feed them without seeing them go to school, and yet I can"t let them go to school without them eating,. I don"t want to see them having the same life as me."    A quarter of young children around the world are not getting enough nutrients to grow properly, and 300 die of malnutrition every hour, according to a new report that lays bare the effects of the global food crisis.    There are 170 million children aged under five whose development has been stunted by malnutrition because of lack of food for them and their breastfeeding mothers, and the situation is getting significantly worse, according to research by the charity Save the Children.    In Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Peru and Nigeria – countries which are the home of half of the world"s stunted children – recent rises in global food prices are forcing the parents of malnourished children to cut back on food and pull children out of school to work.    According to the report, A Life Free from Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition, a third of parents surveyed said their children routinely complain they do not have enough to eat. One in six parents can never afford to buy meat, milk or vegetables. It suggests that six out of 10 children in Afghanistan are not getting enough nutrients to avoid stunted growth. "If no concerted action is taken," warns Justin Forsyth, the charity"s chief executive, "half a billion children will be physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years".    Over the past five years the price of food has soared across the globe, thanks to extreme weather conditions, diverting farmland to grow biofuels, speculative trading of food commodities and the global financial crisis. The poor, who spend the bulk of their income on food, are hit hardest.    One in four parents in the countries surveyed have been forced to cut back on food for their families. One in six have had children skip school to help their parents at work.    In India, half of all children are stunted from malnutrition with a quarter often going without food entirely. In Afghanistan, the price of food has risen 25 per cent – the average rise worldwide in 2011. In places like Kenya it is up 40 per cent.    Save the Children describes malnutrition as a silent killer because it is often not recorded as a cause of death on birth certificates, leading to a lack of action across the developing world.    With early intervention, the life-long physical and mental stunting from hunger can be eased, enabling individuals to reach their potential.    In northern Afghanistan, Mohammed Jan was only half the weight he should have been at seven months because his mother was so poor that she did not have enough food to produce breast milk. He was slipping into death, but he was spotted by a voluntary community health worker and sent to Khulm District Hospital near Mazar-e-Sharif.    The majority of children experiencing malnutrition in countries such as India, Nigeria and Bangladesh are not as lucky, according to the report.    Malnutrition is the underlying cause of a third of all child deaths, the report says, but it never receives the high-profile campaigning and investment accorded to other causes of child mortality such as malaria, measles or Aids. Aid focused on those has produced results. Child deaths from malaria have been slashed by a third since 2000, yet child malnutrition in Africa has fallen by less than 0.3 per cent each year over the same time frame.    Save the Children said that, without greater focus on the condition, individuals such as Mohammed Jan were facing a blighted future. "More than 30,000 children already die every year in Afghanistan because of malnutrition, and a severe drought in the north has left thousands more dangerously hungry," said Mr Forsyth, who has just returned from the country.    Most malnourished children, around 85 per cent, do not die but are diminished, physically and mentally. The World Bank estimates that stunting reduces the GDP of developing countries by between 2 and 3 per cent. Children with stunted growth can have an IQ 15 points lower than a well-fed child"s.    "Obviously that has a knock-on impact on their education and the development potential of the nation," said Mr Forsyth. The last decade has seen significant improvements in the health of children in the developing world. Unnecessary child deaths have fallen from 12 million a year to 7.6 million. The world food crisis is now threatening to stall that progress.    Mr Forsyth, from Save the Children estimates that, for $10bn focused on a package of basic interventions, two million lives a year would be saved and 60 million more saved from stunting.    450m Children will be affected by stunting in the next 15 years, if current trends continue. 1 in 3 Malnutrition is an underlying cause of the deaths of 2.6 million children. 300 Children die every hour of every day because of malnutrition.    A child needs protein to grow and micronutrients are essential to development. Millions lack both. The consequences can be seen in the distended bellies, peeling skin and thinning hair typical of the malnourished child. They may be irritable, apathetic or anxious. Their brains grow more slowly, with changes similar to those in children with mental retardation from other causes.    The younger they suffer malnourishment, the worse the outcome. Their physical growth is slowed, cognitive development arrested and their immune systems fail to mature, putting them at heightened risk from infection.    Malnutrition contributes to more than half of child deaths worldwide. It affects virtually every organ system, causing fatty degeneration of the liver and heart and atrophy of the bowel. Its impact on the immune system is similar to that of Aids. The common result is diarrhoea, which in turn worsens the malnutrition.    The commonest deficiencies include iron, lack of which causes fatigue and anaemia, iodine (developmental delay), Vitamin D (poor growth and rickets), vitamin A (night blindness) and zinc (poor wound healing).    Globally, malnutrition is the most important cause of illness and death. The commonest cause in the developing world is lack of food, but it may also result from infection or illness, which prevents the child eating or absorbing nutrients from food.    A malnourished adult can survive until the next harvest. But a malnourished child will have its development stunted, with consequences that will be felt for life.    http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/news-and-comment/news/2012-08/food-crisis-now-permanent-millions-west-africa
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item