Posted on 05/16/2006 7:30:46 PM PDT by blam
Happiness lies in misery as UN war on hunger fails to progress
By David Blair in Dar-es-Salaam
(Filed: 17/05/2006)
Wrapped in the tatty sheets of a hospital bed, Happiness Kitomari raised her emaciated arms and clasped her distraught mother with tiny fingers.
She stared with bewildered eyes at the tangled drip-feed keeping her alive. Emergency treatment will probably save this malnourished young girl from the slums of Tanzania's capital, Dar-es-Salaam.
But her mother, Anna, must struggle every day to feed her children. "Life is very hard and sometimes I want to die," said Mrs Kitomari. "It is better to die than to lead this life."
Neither Happiness nor her mother knows that six years ago the leaders of virtually every country in the world gathered at the United Nations in New York and pledged to "eradicate" hunger.
Helping malnourished children was the first of eight "millennium development goals". Every government promised that by 2015 the proportion of children under the age of five suffering from malnutrition would be halved.
Today, Africa has made little progress. Of the 17 countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, only one - Botswana - is on course to meet this target. Unicef, the UN's children's agency, says a third of all the children in this vast region are undernourished.
Children go hungry in Tanzania despite it being a fertile, stable country that has not suffered badly from drought. It is well supported and will receive £110 million from Britain this year - more than any other African nation.
Yet it is making minimal progress towards halving child malnutrition. The reason why Happiness weighs only 11lb is very simple - her parents cannot afford to feed her properly.
Across Africa, one of the most common causes of hunger is not a shortage of food but lack of money to buy any.
This is particularly so in Tanzania, where the capital's slums are filled with new arrivals from the countryside and national income per head is only £150.
Mrs Kitomari, 30, and her husband, Rodrick, 36, followed a path familiar to millions of Africans when they left their village for Dar-es-Salaam two years ago.
Mr Kitomari worked as a security guard, earning £30 per month, but last year he lost his job and the only work he has had since is occasional labouring that pays £1 per day.
Much of the time, the family has no money to feed Happiness and her brothers, Baraka, seven, and Joshua, four. Usually, Mrs Kitomari gives them a crude porridge, made from flour, sugar and warm water. But even this has been difficult recently.
Happiness became so emaciated that her mother took her to Amana hospital. Therapeutic feeding will save her this time but she will return to the slums and back to the risk of joining the 10 per cent of Tanzanian children who die before the age of five.
Saba Mebrahtu, a senior nutrition adviser for Unicef, said that failure to address child hunger made achieving other goals such as reducing infant mortality and expanding education far harder.
"Malnutrition contributes as much as 60 per cent towards child mortality," she said. "Unless we deal with nutrition, we cannot address the other problems we face."
"Unless we deal with nutrition, we cannot address the other problems we face."
Sorry, Ma'am, but you're wrong. Unless we deal with corrupt governments, we cannot address the problem of hunger.
As usual, the problem of hunger is looked at @ss-backwards.
The UN and failure are synonomous.
Name one program the UN has had success with.
The article did touch on the fact that the people are starving because people can't afford the food.
It then touched on the fact that work is scarce.
And then the author completely flew by the obvious answer of economic development and job creation, and went on to focus on the issue of nutrition.
As the author accurately points out, poverty is the primary cause of child malnutrition in the world, but fails to recognize that cheaper food won't enable people with no money to buy it, and free food doesn't address the fact that the people still don't have jobs with which to afford better food, clothing, and shelter.
We're agreed that corruption is the prevailing cause of poverty and unemployment in third world countries, and thus the primary cause of child malnutrition and starvation.
Yes we can rest easy because the UN is on the case! Hah!
It then touched on the fact that work is scarce.
But the enviro-whackos and anti-globos can't have - gasp! - development going on in these backwaters. No, no, can't have that! Why it might actually raise their standard of living.
Enviro-whackos are a bunch of hypocrites who go to third world countries to prevent development, put it on their resumés, then return to the U.S. or Europe and take six digit jobs working as "environmental impact analysts" for big industrial firms.
And the principled enviro-whackos who live simple lives, on minimal budgets, recycling everything... Well, I've never met one. Have you?
And irrational anti-development rules and regs for third world countries actually results in more pollution and less care for the environment. This, is a fact, and it is easily evidenced by a simple analysis of pollution per unit of GDP. The more advanced and developed countries are cleaner and healthier.
Exactly!
Pardon me, but have none of thes folks ever heard of a liberty gardon?
yep
"Across Africa, one of the most common causes of hunger is not a shortage of food but lack of money to buy any."
Bull flop.
The most common cause of hunger in Africa is despots stealing the money allocated by other countries trying to help them. The best current example is Robert Mugabe.
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