Posted on 11/15/2004 7:59:23 AM PST by new cruelty
Stars came out in force to record the new version of 1984's Do They Know It's Christmas? at the weekend to raise money for 1.6 million destitute people in the Darfur region of Sudan.
But 20 years on from the historic, chart-topping original Band Aid single, which raised millions of pounds for famine relief in Ethiopia, hunger and malnutrition remain the biggest risk to health around the world, more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
In Africa, millions of people still suffer from the ravages of war and drought, from Ethiopia to Zimbabwe. And in North Korea, up to a quarter of the population is dependent on food aid.
Across the world, more than 800 million people know what it is like to go to bed hungry.
On the 20th anniversary of Band Aid, here are 20 facts about global hunger that we should all know:
1. Hunger and malnutrition kill more people every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
2. Every five seconds a child dies because he or she was hungry.
3. There are more than 800 million people around the world who know what it is like to go to bed hungry.
4. The world produces enough food to feed everyone but still these 800 million remain chronically hungry.
5. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, there are 198 million hungry people.
6. More than 2 million people are likely to be dependent on food aid in the Darfur region of western Sudan by next year.
7. Almost 10 million people die around the world each year as a result of hunger and malnutrition. That is more than the total number of people who died in World War I.
8. One out of every three people in Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from hunger.
9. Almost a quarter of the world's hungry people live in Africa.
10. Good nutrition helps prolongs the life of HIV sufferers.
11. Africa has already lost more farmers to AIDS (7 million) than there are farmers in Europe and North America.
12. By 2020, HIV is expected to have killed 20% of southern Africa's farm workers.
13. HIV and hunger work together. Malnutrition accelerates the progress of HIV. HIV worsens malnutrition.
14. There are 11 million AIDS orphans in Africa. Most never learnt how their parents grew or prepared food.
15. 10 pence a day is all it takes to feed a hungry child at school.
16. Hunger is inherited. Each year 17 million children are born underweight because their mothers are malnourished.
17. Providing pregnant mothers with nutritionally balanced food can reduce the likelihood of an underweight baby by 32%.
18. In the 1990s, global poverty dropped by 20% but the number of undernourished people around the world increased.
19. The World Food Programme devotes a larger proportion of its assistance (on average half) to Africa than any other UN agency or individual government donor.
20. Food aid from the World Food Programme has reached 1.2 billion of the world's poor over the past 4 decades – that's almost the equal to the population of India.
* Band Aid 20 is released on November 29. Proceeds will again go towards aid for Africa, particularly for Sudan's volatile Darfur region, where tens of thousands have died since March from disease and malnutrition.
A commitment to eradicate global hunger and poverty was made by world leaders at the millennium summit at the UN headquarters in New York in 2000. Their pledge was to halve the proportion of hungry people in the developing world by 2015. Unfortunately, apart from progress made in China, the number of chronically hungry people has actually risen by 60 million people since 1992.
Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime. . .
Liberals and the U.N. focus on the give rather than the teach.
And the give usually involves taking from someone else.
I think that people have known for some time that hunger is primarily caused by distribution problems.
I don't see how a benefit is going to help convince thugs to stop stealing food donations or to allow donations to get to the people who need them. Nor will a benefit convince criminals to leave farmers alone.
BTW - I'm one of the 800+ million who knows what going to bed hungry is like - so what?
I like your profile page.
Hah. Thank you.
We need a benefit concert to raise money toward kicking the Communist rulers of NK out of their jobs. THEN the people would actually get the food instead of it being diverted to feed the army.
~ Karl Marx
ROTFLOL. Great stuff.
So what? Sew buttons.
What did you do to get out of going to bed hungry? What changed?
Last time I looked it up only one country in Africa is self sufficient and in fact exports food to the other African countries - South Africa. Rhodesia was once an exporter but that has changed since the Brits were thrown out.
There aren't enough agriculural agents, money, fertilizer, farm implements and money in the world to turn it around in Africa for the forseeable future. Starvation simply will not be eliminated there as the population continues to grow and autocracies rule.
I admire Bill Gates' efforts to reduce disease with his billions but saving lives isn't the answer and may in fact only add to the problem.
It might be considered a bit insensitive---but accurate.
"BTW - I'm one of the 800+ million who knows what going to bed hungry is like "
You should have tried the Atkins diet.
"Last time I looked it up only one country in Africa is self sufficient and in fact exports food to the other African countries - South Africa"
And don't expect that to continue for long either.
more children would survive if Gates would field an army and protect companies that set up shop in Africa
Exactly, I would willingly donate to a needy child but I'm pretty sure the higher-ups would get it and my money would just go to strengthen the status quo of tyranny. I do have my children through Catholic Relief and I know that they are receiving my money.
There is a big difference between starvation or chronic malnutrition and "food insecurity".
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