John Holmes, the U.N.'s top humanitarian aid official has released a statement saying that global food shortages and higher prices are more likely to cause malnutrition than outright famine, at least in the near term.
"People, particularly those on the lowest incomes, will be eating less and less well," he told a news conference in Geneva.
While it seems like good news that there will not be widespread famine and starvation deaths, malnutrition is as dangerous a problem, one that is silently crippling children.
A report on children and nutrition by UNICEF states:
* Malnourished children are much more likely to die as a result of a common childhood disease than those who are adequately nourished
* In young children, malnutrition dulls motivation and curiosity and reduces play and exploratory activities. These effects, in turn, impair mental and cognitive development by reducing the amount of interaction children have both with their environment, and with those who provide care.
* Robbed of their mental as well as physical potential, malnourished children who live past childhood face diminished futures. They will become adults with lower physical and intellectual abilities, lower levels of productivity and higher levels of chronic illness and disability, often in societies with little economic capacity for even minimal therapeutic and rehabilitative measures.
In a nutshell, children who don’t get the right food at the right age stand the risk of paying for that their WHOLE lives.
Agreed that everyone is feeling the pinch but for more fortunate people, it means sacrificing non-essential expenses to meet the rising cost of essential items. For the poverty stricken, it means not being able to give children the future they deserve.
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