[News] from [guardian.co.uk]
[Environment > Food]
Food, famine & climate change: How we feed the world on 85p
As successive droughts and financial turmoil push a billion people worldwide to the brink of starvation, Plumpy'nut, a fast-food wonder snack, is quietly saving children's lives
John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 11 October 2009 Article history
CONTINUED FROM newsgdn3
"People are eating nothing but maize porridge now. That's just carbohydrates and leads to oedema, water retention, swollen legs. It's the beginning of starvation. Here you mainly see the wasting of muscles. This is very common already." Malnutrition, she says, is still poorly understood, but is known to lead to stunting of growth, brain impairment, frailty, attention deficit disorder and worse. Even with 29 outpatient therapeutic programme centres and 32 supplementary feeding programmes, she admits it's only a pinprick in the sea of need. Nearly half of all communities in northern Kenya now officially depend on food aid, either from the UN or from the government, which has appealed for $230m to feed 3.8 million people who they expect to be seriously affected by hunger in the next six months.
But the world has made progress in at least one respect. "We are not killing people [with hunger] as we did 20 years ago," says Yves Horent, the European community's head of humanitarian aid in Nairobi. "Things have improved enormously. We don't have many deaths from hunger nowadays. We're become very good at keeping people alive technically with foods like Plumpy'nut. We have techniques to save people. We can keep mortality rates low. It's incredibly efficient. We can save children, no problem. Just 20 years ago this would not have been possible. The cost of a life saved is now very cheap – €20-€40 will save a life. We can give vouchers, so people can access food easily. Fifteen years ago that would have been unheard of. We can deal with 20 million people. Now where there is free access or there are no blocks [to humanitarian groups] to working in a country, we can move thousands of tonnes of food. We won't see people dying in thousands again, like in Ethiopia in 1984. People tried their best then, but the science was not as good as now. In the mid-1980s, we had very few professional aid workers and only a few nutritionists," he says.
But while the humanitarian groups have become incredibly good at saving people, the worry is that no one is addressing the causes of growing hunger. "Part of the problem is that we have become expert in a very artificial way now. We can take a child who is almost dead and revive her. But we cannot stop it happening again and again. We cannot prevent the problem," he says.
The reality of emergency aid today, he says, is that the millions of hungry people who are kept on a drip-feed of food aid from governments and the UN are out of sight. More than 100 million people now depend on UN food aid just to survive, not just to get them over a disaster or a temporary emergency, but to stay alive for years at a time. More than 5 million people in Ethiopia, similar numbers in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, 1 million in Kenya and more in Burma, Somalia, Yemen, Chad and India are kept permanently just above the starvation levels. There may be no full-scale humanitarian emergencies any more, but people are left in a perpetual state of chronic hunger.
Now there are ominous signs that rich countries are withdrawing even this safety net. Following the recession, countries have pledged less than half the money needed to feed the hungry. Even as hunger is increasing, the World Food Programme is nearly $3bn short and is having to close offices, cut operations and slash rations to millions of people who have no way of earning money to buy food. The previous UN minimum daily supply of 2,100 calories has been cut to 1,050 – about three tins of baked beans; the absolute bare minimum for a healthy diet.
The economic crisis all over the world has pushed incomes down and increased unemployment, says Sheeran. "The food crisis is not over in the developing world. In fact, the situation is more alarming in many countries than it was even a year ago. There's nothing more basic than food. If people don't have it, one of three things happen: they revolt, they migrate or they die."
Actually UN food supplies never get to everyone in need, and whole communities that are cut off from roads, not favoured by politicians or that are just hard to access get left out of emergency feeding programmes. In Mathare slum in Nairobi – the second largest in the country, with nearly 800,000 people living in desperate poverty in a maze of tin shacks – the chances of food being distributed to the neediest by the government is practically nil. Help is left to charities, churches and individuals.
Magdaline Gitahe of the Redeemed Gospel Church helped distribute food from Concern Worldwide and other charities to 2,000 people in Mathare in the first week of September. The numbers who are hungry are far greater than the UN or others know, she says. "They have little idea of the size of the problem. There is far more hunger than there was just a year ago. Maize used to cost 40 shillings [34 pence] a pack last year; now it costs 200 [£1.70]. Sugar was 50 [42p]; now it's 115 [98p].
"Bread milk, flour, salt – everything has gone up. People are cutting back on food every way they can. We take porridge without sugar, tea is no longer a priority, and instead of buying a big bag of sugar we buy little ones. Water has become very expensive. Last year the government gave out some food. This year we have had nothing. More and more hungry people are coming to us for the first time. Children are dropping out of school because they have empty stomachs. We cannot keep up," says Gitahe.
Alice Wanjiru received a bag of maize and some sugar from Gitahe. Alice has eight people to feed, including a disabled daughter who begs in Nairobi city centre, and her dead sister's three children. She earns no more than £1.25 a day washing clothes and collecting plastic for recycling. "We don't have food in the morning, just a cup of tea. We cannot afford to cook at lunch. So we eat in the evening but often we go to sleep without food," she says.
"People here in Mathare are mostly unemployed and uneducated," says Gitahe. "They do casual jobs. The women wash clothes, the men work on construction sites. Some hawk, and sell paraffin or water. The situation is very bad. To spread out the benefits, we only give food to one person in each family. Many people are still dying of hunger. I have seen people fall down because they are so weak."
Mary Magure, a single mother with five children who lives in one room in the slum, says she speaks for thousands in her situation. "It's almost impossible to survive now. I buy food in the street so we don't have to buy paraffin or charcoal. I don't have lunch, just the occasional meal in the evening. The best meal I could possibly cook now is maize flour. I can't possibly afford rice – perhaps a packet of maize and some greens. When there's no food and no money, the family just has to understand," she says.
She fears, but she does not know, that her children may be prostituting themselves to eat, and she starts crying. "When you are hungry, you start to imagine things. People become desperate. Everyone here needs food. Right now life is a very big challenge." OFM
To donate to Concern Worldwide, go to www. concern.net/en or call 0800 410 510
PLUMPY'NUT A French scientist trying to fight malnutrition discovered the answer in an unlikely place: his own breakfast table.
By Rebecca Seal
Dr André Briend spent years trying to come up with a food that could be fed to seriously malnourished children which didn't need reconstituting with water. Most therapeutic foods used during famines were expensive powdered milks that relied on clean water – something that tends to be in short supply in places where people are at risk of starvation. Small children fed these products once they returned to their villages from feeding stations could develop water-borne diseases like dysentery – just as likely to kill them as their lack of food.
Paediatric nutritionist Briend was desperate to change this situation but had no breakthrough until, one morning in 1999, he noticed a pot of Nutella sitting on his kitchen table. The chocolate and nut spread was the inspiration he'd been searching for, and he began experimenting with puréed chocolate bars and sweets, mixed with the kind of vitamins and minerals malnourished children need urgently. Plumpy'nut was the result: a foil pouch the size of an adult fist, filled with peanut butter, sugar and a mixture of other vital nutrients. Each pack contains 500 calories, and with two servings a day, a severely underweight toddler can put on up to 2lb a week. At about £12.50 for 56 packs over four weeks – the most required to get a child back to health, followed by just one pack a day to keep them going – it's cheaper than milk. No water is required, the packs keep for up to two years (unlike their milky predecessors, which spoilt in the heat). For small children whose tummies have shrunk, the paste can deliver a lot of easy-to-digest mono-unsaturated fats and protein in a small portion. Even better, because parents can take away a week's supply, most people don't need to stay in a feeding centre.
CONTINUED ON newsgdn5
[Environment > Food]
Food, famine & climate change: How we feed the world on 85p
As successive droughts and financial turmoil push a billion people worldwide to the brink of starvation, Plumpy'nut, a fast-food wonder snack, is quietly saving children's lives
John Vidal
The Observer, Sunday 11 October 2009 Article history
CONTINUED FROM newsgdn3
"People are eating nothing but maize porridge now. That's just carbohydrates and leads to oedema, water retention, swollen legs. It's the beginning of starvation. Here you mainly see the wasting of muscles. This is very common already." Malnutrition, she says, is still poorly understood, but is known to lead to stunting of growth, brain impairment, frailty, attention deficit disorder and worse. Even with 29 outpatient therapeutic programme centres and 32 supplementary feeding programmes, she admits it's only a pinprick in the sea of need. Nearly half of all communities in northern Kenya now officially depend on food aid, either from the UN or from the government, which has appealed for $230m to feed 3.8 million people who they expect to be seriously affected by hunger in the next six months.
But the world has made progress in at least one respect. "We are not killing people [with hunger] as we did 20 years ago," says Yves Horent, the European community's head of humanitarian aid in Nairobi. "Things have improved enormously. We don't have many deaths from hunger nowadays. We're become very good at keeping people alive technically with foods like Plumpy'nut. We have techniques to save people. We can keep mortality rates low. It's incredibly efficient. We can save children, no problem. Just 20 years ago this would not have been possible. The cost of a life saved is now very cheap – €20-€40 will save a life. We can give vouchers, so people can access food easily. Fifteen years ago that would have been unheard of. We can deal with 20 million people. Now where there is free access or there are no blocks [to humanitarian groups] to working in a country, we can move thousands of tonnes of food. We won't see people dying in thousands again, like in Ethiopia in 1984. People tried their best then, but the science was not as good as now. In the mid-1980s, we had very few professional aid workers and only a few nutritionists," he says.
But while the humanitarian groups have become incredibly good at saving people, the worry is that no one is addressing the causes of growing hunger. "Part of the problem is that we have become expert in a very artificial way now. We can take a child who is almost dead and revive her. But we cannot stop it happening again and again. We cannot prevent the problem," he says.
The reality of emergency aid today, he says, is that the millions of hungry people who are kept on a drip-feed of food aid from governments and the UN are out of sight. More than 100 million people now depend on UN food aid just to survive, not just to get them over a disaster or a temporary emergency, but to stay alive for years at a time. More than 5 million people in Ethiopia, similar numbers in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, 1 million in Kenya and more in Burma, Somalia, Yemen, Chad and India are kept permanently just above the starvation levels. There may be no full-scale humanitarian emergencies any more, but people are left in a perpetual state of chronic hunger.
Now there are ominous signs that rich countries are withdrawing even this safety net. Following the recession, countries have pledged less than half the money needed to feed the hungry. Even as hunger is increasing, the World Food Programme is nearly $3bn short and is having to close offices, cut operations and slash rations to millions of people who have no way of earning money to buy food. The previous UN minimum daily supply of 2,100 calories has been cut to 1,050 – about three tins of baked beans; the absolute bare minimum for a healthy diet.
The economic crisis all over the world has pushed incomes down and increased unemployment, says Sheeran. "The food crisis is not over in the developing world. In fact, the situation is more alarming in many countries than it was even a year ago. There's nothing more basic than food. If people don't have it, one of three things happen: they revolt, they migrate or they die."
Actually UN food supplies never get to everyone in need, and whole communities that are cut off from roads, not favoured by politicians or that are just hard to access get left out of emergency feeding programmes. In Mathare slum in Nairobi – the second largest in the country, with nearly 800,000 people living in desperate poverty in a maze of tin shacks – the chances of food being distributed to the neediest by the government is practically nil. Help is left to charities, churches and individuals.
Magdaline Gitahe of the Redeemed Gospel Church helped distribute food from Concern Worldwide and other charities to 2,000 people in Mathare in the first week of September. The numbers who are hungry are far greater than the UN or others know, she says. "They have little idea of the size of the problem. There is far more hunger than there was just a year ago. Maize used to cost 40 shillings [34 pence] a pack last year; now it costs 200 [£1.70]. Sugar was 50 [42p]; now it's 115 [98p].
"Bread milk, flour, salt – everything has gone up. People are cutting back on food every way they can. We take porridge without sugar, tea is no longer a priority, and instead of buying a big bag of sugar we buy little ones. Water has become very expensive. Last year the government gave out some food. This year we have had nothing. More and more hungry people are coming to us for the first time. Children are dropping out of school because they have empty stomachs. We cannot keep up," says Gitahe.
Alice Wanjiru received a bag of maize and some sugar from Gitahe. Alice has eight people to feed, including a disabled daughter who begs in Nairobi city centre, and her dead sister's three children. She earns no more than £1.25 a day washing clothes and collecting plastic for recycling. "We don't have food in the morning, just a cup of tea. We cannot afford to cook at lunch. So we eat in the evening but often we go to sleep without food," she says.
"People here in Mathare are mostly unemployed and uneducated," says Gitahe. "They do casual jobs. The women wash clothes, the men work on construction sites. Some hawk, and sell paraffin or water. The situation is very bad. To spread out the benefits, we only give food to one person in each family. Many people are still dying of hunger. I have seen people fall down because they are so weak."
Mary Magure, a single mother with five children who lives in one room in the slum, says she speaks for thousands in her situation. "It's almost impossible to survive now. I buy food in the street so we don't have to buy paraffin or charcoal. I don't have lunch, just the occasional meal in the evening. The best meal I could possibly cook now is maize flour. I can't possibly afford rice – perhaps a packet of maize and some greens. When there's no food and no money, the family just has to understand," she says.
She fears, but she does not know, that her children may be prostituting themselves to eat, and she starts crying. "When you are hungry, you start to imagine things. People become desperate. Everyone here needs food. Right now life is a very big challenge." OFM
To donate to Concern Worldwide, go to www. concern.net/en or call 0800 410 510
PLUMPY'NUT A French scientist trying to fight malnutrition discovered the answer in an unlikely place: his own breakfast table.
By Rebecca Seal
Dr André Briend spent years trying to come up with a food that could be fed to seriously malnourished children which didn't need reconstituting with water. Most therapeutic foods used during famines were expensive powdered milks that relied on clean water – something that tends to be in short supply in places where people are at risk of starvation. Small children fed these products once they returned to their villages from feeding stations could develop water-borne diseases like dysentery – just as likely to kill them as their lack of food.
Paediatric nutritionist Briend was desperate to change this situation but had no breakthrough until, one morning in 1999, he noticed a pot of Nutella sitting on his kitchen table. The chocolate and nut spread was the inspiration he'd been searching for, and he began experimenting with puréed chocolate bars and sweets, mixed with the kind of vitamins and minerals malnourished children need urgently. Plumpy'nut was the result: a foil pouch the size of an adult fist, filled with peanut butter, sugar and a mixture of other vital nutrients. Each pack contains 500 calories, and with two servings a day, a severely underweight toddler can put on up to 2lb a week. At about £12.50 for 56 packs over four weeks – the most required to get a child back to health, followed by just one pack a day to keep them going – it's cheaper than milk. No water is required, the packs keep for up to two years (unlike their milky predecessors, which spoilt in the heat). For small children whose tummies have shrunk, the paste can deliver a lot of easy-to-digest mono-unsaturated fats and protein in a small portion. Even better, because parents can take away a week's supply, most people don't need to stay in a feeding centre.
CONTINUED ON newsgdn5
