Paul Virgo
ROME, Jan 22 2010 (IPS) – German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was way off the mark when he wrote the famous line what does not destroy me, makes me stronger at least when it comes to hunger.
Every six seconds a child is killed by hunger or a related cause on a planet where over one billion people do not have enough to eat despite adequate supplies, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Rather than being fortified, the survivors of this scourge carry its debilitating effects with them for the rest of their lives, and often pass them on to future generations too.
This is because hunger is not only the result of poverty, it is also one of its major causes, experts say.
Adults with empty stomachs do not have the strength to work to their full potential and are more susceptible to disease, rendering them vulnerable to even more food insecurity.
Children s ability to learn, meanwhile, is badly curtailed if they suffer hunger. Many malnourished children are handicapped for life, which limits their ability to provide for themselves and for their own children when they grow up.
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If people don t get nutrition, their bodies and minds don t develop, and that produces all sorts of problems, especially health problems, and leads to more hunger, Tony P. Hall, director of the Washington-based Alliance to End Hunger, and former United States ambassador to the FAO, told IPS.
I ve seen this so many times. When a child suffers hunger, even if he or she doesn t die, it causes problems in the future for them and for their countries.
U.N. children s agency UNICEF said in November that poor nutrition was having a massive impact on children s development in many parts of the world. It said over a third of deaths in under-fives in developing countries are linked to inadequate diet, which also causes one in three -195 million to have stunted growth. This is because the body prioritises essential functions when undernourished and directs fewer nutrients to growth.
If these children s bodies are not developing properly, scientific evidence suggests their brains are not either. For example, a study published in The Lancet medical journal in 2007 showed that for every 10 percent increase in the prevalence of stunting in a country, the proportion of children reaching the final grade of school falls by eight percent.
Undernutrition diminishes the ability of children to learn and earn throughout their lives, said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman.
Nutritional deprivation leaves children tired and weak, and lowers their IQs, so they perform poorly in school. As adults they are less productive and earn less than their healthy peers, and the cycle of undernutrition and poverty repeats itself, generation after generation.
So logic suggests that ensuring children good nutrition is necessary both to combat hunger today and to guarantee food security for the future.
However, children s charities say this area is frequently neglected in efforts to promote development. They say this is highlighted in the slow progress in reducing the number of underweight children, a key indicator for the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger by 2015.
In 1990 nations promised to slash the proportion of underweight under- fives, about a quarter of children in developing countries at that time, by 50 percent. But a 2009 UNICEF report showed 23 percent of under-fives remained underweight in these countries almost 20 years later.
Donors and international agencies frequently devote more money and attention to other high profile problems such as AIDS, the cause of about three percent of child deaths, far fewer than poor nutrition.
National governments are accused of not making the issue a high enough priority. The Save the Children international non-governmental organisation says governments often leave nutrition in the hands of strategically weak parts of their health ministries.
A huge amount of money is rightly going into agriculture and food security with investments from governments and bodies such as the World Bank and the European Union, Alex Rees, Save the Children UK s Head of Hunger Reduction, told IPS. Last year the G8 pledged 20 billion dollars to food security. The main thing for us is that this has an impact on child nutrition.
I absolutely agree (that child nutrition has been neglected in development initiatives) and it s not just us who think that. The World Bank and many others agree with us. Nutrition must be seen as a political priority for ministers and presidents.
Experts say the first 33 months of life, from conception to a child s second birthday, are particularly important. After two years of age, it is much harder to reverse the effects of chronic malnutrition, especially its impact on brain development, they say.
Early childhood in particular lays the foundation for a lifetime, said Veneman. Children who are chronically undernourished before their second birthday are likely to have diminished cognitive and physical development for the rest of their lives.
Save the Children advocates a range of policies it says can boost diets to help break this vicious circle of hunger spawning more hunger.
These include vitamin and protein supplement programmes to combat the micronutrient deficiencies that are behind 10 percent of under-five fatalities and support to help mothers to breastfeed. Save the Children said in a recent report that the latter is one of the most cost-effective public health interventions available today because of the enormous benefits breastfeeding brings in the first months of life.
It also says all pregnant women and families with very young children should be given cash benefits to ensure the poorest can afford to have nutritious diets in this crucial period.
These benefits should be universal, it argues, to ensure no one slips though the safety net. Besides, Rees said that sometimes the process of targeting investments means they end up being more expensive than universal measures.
Naturally, these interventions require money, which is never easy to find when one is talking about the poorer half of the world, especially in times of economic crisis.
But activists say the immediate benefits of lower human suffering combined with the long-term returns in terms of greater national economic growth, prosperity and lower health spending make these outlays well worthwhile.
UNICEF, for example, said research shows that every dollar spent on vitamin A and zinc supplementation for children creates benefits that exceed 17 dollars.
Investing in the 33-month period from conception to a child s second birthday is particularly important as this is when you can make the generational break, added Rees.
By investing in your children you are investing in the future If you ve got a well-nourished population, you are well on the way towards having a productive population.
