As important it can be to think about our choices regarding our alimentation, it is even more important to also remember how lucky, and sometimes spoiled we are, when people still die from lack of food today.
How can it be? How is it still possible that some have too much when some others have just really nothing, and we are talking here about being able just to eat something, just to stay alive.
According the the World Food Programme of the United Nations (https://www.wfp.org/), the world is at the verge to see many famines episodes rise, mostly in Africa. Side effect of the Covid pandemia, hunger pandemic threatens millions of people.
« The SOFI report, or “The State of Food and Nutrition in the World 2021”, estimates that up to 811 million people went hungry last year as climate extremes and economic slowdowns, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, continued to increase in frequency and intensity. (…) A devastating reality — the path to zero hunger is being stopped dead in its tracks by conflict, climate and COVID-19.“
WFP executive director David Beasley
As you know if you read my previous article about the SDGs, « Zero hunger » is goal number 2. The deterioration of alimentation is often connected with economical or political context. Except from one country.
Today in Madagascar
More than 1.1 million people in southern Madagascar are unable to feed themselves because the country is suffering from its most acute drought in four decades. People there are left with nothing to eat and no means. Malnutrition is raging there since they do not have access to nutritive foods. The lives of children are at stake as nutrition among under-fives deteriorates to alarming levels.
Even though the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have issued an urgent warning in May 2021, the situation is still not going the right way. People and associations are in desperate need of human and financial support to overcome this situation.
“The issue is no longer about how bad it is – it is extremely bad. Children are starving, children are dying. I met a mother with an 8-month-old child who looked like he was only 2 months old. She had already lost her older child. We are already witnessing whole villages shutting down and moving to urban centres. This puts additional pressure on an already fragile situation.”
WFP Senior Director of Operations Amer Daoudi who recently visited one of the worst-affected areas, Sihanamaro.
In this critical situation, only contributions and communication can make the situation change.
Never forget that no one on this Earth is safe from having to face this situation someday.
To make a contribution on the WFP website: click here.
