The Hidden Hunger-None of this is glamorous

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24kristof.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

We in the West misunderstand starvation — especially the increasing hunger caused by the global economic crisis —

The World Bank has estimated that United Nations goals for overcoming global poverty have been set back seven years by the global crisis. It calculates that increased malnutrition last year may have caused an additional 44 million children to suffer permanent physical or mental impairment.

Yet one of the great Western misconceptions is that severe malnutrition is simply about not getting enough to eat. Often it’s about not getting the right micronutrients — iron, zinc, vitamin A, iodine — and one of the most cost-effective ways outsiders can combat poverty is to fight this “hidden hunger.”

Malnutrition is not a glamorous field, and so it’s routinely neglected by everybody — donor governments, poor countries and, yes, journalists. But malnutrition is implicated in one-third to one-half of all child deaths each year; the immediate cause may be diarrhea, but lurking behind it is a deficiency of zinc.

“That image of a starving child in a famine doesn’t represent the magnitude of the problem,” notes Shawn Baker of Helen Keller International, a New York-based aid group working in this area. “For every child who is like that, you have 10 who are somewhat malnourished and many more who are deficient in micronutrients.

In my column last Sunday, I wrote about women dying in childbirth. One reason so many die of hemorrhages is that 42 percent of pregnant women worldwide have anemia, according to the World Health Organization. And here in Guinea-Bissau, 83 percent of youngsters under age 5 suffer from iron deficiency.

The general rise in food prices (in part because of American use of corn for ethanol) is leading to more micronutrient deficiencies. One study found that a 50 percent rise in food prices in poor countries leads to a 30 percent drop in iron intake.

Americans typically get micronutrients from fortified foods, and the same strategy is possible in Africa. Helen Keller International is helping Guinea’s leading flour mill fortify its products with iron, folic acid and vitamin B (zinc is coming soon). We visited the mill, and managers said that the fortification costs virtually nothing — a tiny fraction of a penny per loaf of bread — yet it will reduce anemia, maternal mortality and cognitive impairments around the country.

None of this is glamorous, but it’s hugely needed — and truly a bargain.

Someone needs to care.

I spent yesterday morning trying to get Dalmar back in school.  The school had given him 9 days suspension The whole incident started because he refused to take some kind of test that non-English speakers must take.  (He said he had taken it before and passed it.  Apparently the law says he has to take it again.  ) At the moment he is back in school and the school counselor was very helpful. BUT my question is:  I have seen these kids go “down the tubes” in our country.  Many  adolescent children of refugees have been in trouble: gangs, drugs, etc.  They often come from one dire situation only to enter another by moving into lower income areas and attending troubled schools. What I wonder is if anyone can think of how to help these kids?  Someone needs to care.

Crimes against Humanity: Epidemic Rape in Congo

Below is a New York Times Article with some ways to begin interceding.. Perhaps we’ve heard so little about them because the crimes are so unspeakable, the evil so profound. if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();For years now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marauding bands of soldiers and militias have been waging a war of rape and destruction against women. This sustained campaign of mind-bending atrocities, mostly in the eastern part of the country, has been one of the strategic tools in a wider war that has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since the 1990s. Millions have been killed. Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands. But the world, for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering. “These women are raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children, in front of their parents, in front of their neighbors,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who runs a hospital in Bukavu that treats only the women who have sustained the most severe injuries. In some cases, the rapists have violated their victims with loaded guns and pulled the triggers. Other women have had their organs deliberately destroyed by knives or other weapons. Sons have been forced at gunpoint to rape their mothers. Many women and girls have been abducted and sexually enslaved. It is as if, in these particular instances, some window to what we think of as our common humanity had been closed. As The Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman, on assignment in Congo, wrote last fall: “Many of these rapes have been marked by a level of brutality that is shocking even by the twisted standards of a place riven by civil war and haunted by warlords and drug-crazed child soldiers.” Dr. Mukwege visited me at The Times last week. He was accompanied by the playwright, Eve Ensler, who has been passionate in her efforts to bring attention and assistance to the women of Congo. I asked Dr. Mukwege to explain how it was in the strategic interest of the various armed groups to rape and otherwise brutalize women. He described some of the ramifications of such atrocities and the ways in which they undermine the entire society in which the women live. “Once they have raped these women in such a public way,” he said, “sometimes maiming them, destroying their sexual organs — and with everybody watching — the women themselves are destroyed, or virtually destroyed. They are traumatized and humiliated on every level, physical and psychological. That’s the first consequence. “The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped. “Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.” The devastating injuries treated by Dr. Mukwege at his hospital can all but stun the imagination. There is no need to detail them further here. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are commonplace. Often the ability to bear children is destroyed. In many other cases, women end up giving birth to the children of their rapists. “The hospital can take care of 3,600 women every year,” said Dr. Mukwege. “That is our maximum capacity. We can’t take any more.” He spoke of ambulance teams that would drive into villages and be besieged by rape victims desperately seeking treatment. “It is awful to see 300 women in need of help,” he said, “and you have to take 10 because the ambulance can only take 10.” Ms. Ensler spoke of her encounter with an 8-year-old girl during one of her trips to Congo. The girl’s father had been killed in an attack, her mother was raped, and the girl herself was abducted. The child was raped by groups of soldiers over a two-week period and then abandoned. The girl felt too ashamed to allow herself to be held, Ms. Ensler said, because her injuries had left her incontinent. After explaining how she persuaded the child to accept an embrace, to be hugged, Ms. Ensler said, “If we’re living in a century when an 8-year-old girl is incontinent because that many soldiers have raped her, then something has gone terribly wrong.” Despite the presence in the region of the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, no one has been able to stop the systematic rape of the Congolese women. If these are not war crimes, crimes against humanity, then nothing is. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21herbert.html?_r=1&emc=eta1 Some ways to begin praying: - for God to intervene in the lives of those who are being brutalized and also those who are wantonly brutalizing others. -for God to raise up leaders that can bring justice to the region -that Jesus can be lifted up, that hearts can be regenerated and lives changed. Pray for God’s spirit to be at work in those who have been brutalized and shamed.