Parenting

Child HungerProducts Relating to 'Child Hunger'

Child hunger costs Central America billions of dollars a year, a burden that undermines its efforts to wipe out poverty, a UN report has said. It said the high cost of child hunger was the result of decades of inaction and the effects of child hunger are also passed on to future generations.It is estimated that 800,000 children under the age of 5 suffer from hunger in south america alone. Severe acute child hunger kills an estimated one million children each year. This cycle will more probably be repeated in their offspring and poverty will be generation after generation if we don't act to remedy the situation. Child hunger is a moral issue and also a critical economic concern.These findings amount to nothing short of a call to action. I hope that governments, national leaders and all interested parties will heed this warning and push forcefully to increase and sustain the measures to fight child hunger and undernutrition.Child Hunger has very serious long-term costs which are not limited to an individual's life-cycle given the impact on growth during pregnancy of malnourished women.

There is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.

This helped a lot to have RUTF(ready to use therapeutic food) introduced and accepted. Extensive groundwork and was the first to provide evidence that RUTF was effective in the field, and progressively convinced emergency NGOs to change their approach to treating child hunger and malnutrient. Collecting evidence, convincing colleagues and allowing them to collect their own evidence took even longer. The idea of using a spread at the end of 1996, and took about 10 years complete the process.

It provided the nutrients required to treat a severely malnourished child at home, without refrigeration, and even where hygiene conditions were not perfect. It is dispensed as foil-covered bars or in locally available plastic containers and can be stored in tropical conditions for three to four months. Briend became convinced he had hit on a formula that could help children under five recover from severe malnutrition, often at home, without having to be admitted to a feeding centre.The kitchen recipe has since been refined into a product commonly marketed as Plumpy'Nut.

Article Published: Saturday 23rd June 2007