In Bangladesh, the cost of feeding a family a healthy diet runs about three times the average family income. This isn't about luxuries, just a basic healthy diet. And that's three times the total average family income. That means even if the average Bangladeshi family could afford adequate food, which they can't, they'd have nothing for any other necessaries of life.
A study done by Save the Children UK points to the horrific fate now being visited upon the peoples of the third world.
"Costanza de Toma, Save the Children's UK's Hunger advocacy advisor, said: 'The poorest families simply do not have the money to afford to ever feed their children enough good food for them to grow up healthy and strong. Poverty has condemned them to a hand to mouth existence and their children to a future of stunting or early death. In 2000, world leaders promised to halve the proportion of hungry children in the world - but they are failing to deliver.'
"Chronic malnutrition is responsible for 5.6 million child deaths a year. Millions more children around the world will be stunted because of this persistent hunger, which will affect their entire lives - they will be less well developed both mentally and physically, more prone to disease, and when they reach adulthood will be weaker and less able to do manual work. Poverty is the underlying cause beneath this silent emergency."
So, what does poverty really taste like? Why, hardly anything at all.
2 comments:
Enna says......Words, words and more words. Just empty promises. Every government in the world is guilty of this as well as obscenely wealthy men such as Exxon-Mobile who owns other things including railway lines full of old box cars and toxic waste. It's too expensive to clean up so the story goes. When those attitudes exist in North America, I don't think feeding the poor in third world countries is very high on their list.
It's not their priorities I'm focusing on, but yours. They don't waste time reading blogs like this but you and a lot of others like you do read it. If I could get to those types I would try but I haven't found that key yet. In the meantime try thinking about what this situation means to you and what you might be prepared to do about it. The time is not far off when we (me included) are going to be made to stand up for our beliefs instead of just putting them on paper or the internet. We're going to be told the truth, the hard reality that we're going to have to change the way we've been living in order to make room for those who haven't had a spot at the table for a long, long time.
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