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| SOS child eating fruit |
June 14, 2011: In poor nations, rising food prices are having a negative impact on
children’s nutritional health. That’s because families in impoverished regions of the world spend up to 80 percent of income on food. When costs skyrocket, they cut back. Forced to stop buying nutritious foods like meat, poultry, fish, and produce because of their high relative costs, low-income households turn to cereals and grains.
These staples are economical but don’t provide the minerals and vitamins such as iron, zinc, and vitamin A that children need to grow and remain healthy. An absence of these causes micronutrient malnutrition. Known as hidden hunger, this type of malnutrition leads to stunted growth, anemia, blindness, and vulnerability to diarrhea, measles, and other illnesses.
The numbers are dramatic. For instance, 250,000 to 500,000 children a year become blind from lack of sufficient vitamin A, according to the World Health Organization as reported by AlertNet. Young children and pregnant women in Africa and Southeast Asia feel the worst effects.
Upcoming Pressure on Crops Means More Children in Need
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| Little girl sitiing on the ground wiping her eyes while waiting for food. Photo by Reuters/Tim Wimborne, courtesy www.alertnet.org |
Continuing droughts and floods brought on by climate change will inhibit food production in the future, putting more pressure on families to find ways to feed their children nutritious foods.
Anticipating the problem, scientists and nonprofit organizations have been working to breed and disseminate food staples that hold the precious nutrients kids need. The process of fortifying crops with minerals and vitamins, called biofortification, has been introduced in places like Uganda and Mozambique. There, varieties of orange sweet potato enriched with vitamin A have reached up to 75 percent of targeted households, increasing vitamin A among children and women by two-thirds.
But it takes years to breed new crop varieties, and on the ground farmers are not uniformly willing to grow and eat unfamiliar strains of staples. Experts say it will take years to widely introduce biofortification, and up to eight years for such crops to effect improvement in public health. The result: increased numbers of vulnerable children.
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| SOS children eating a nutritious meal at an SOS Children's Villages school |
SOS In Africa and Southeast Asia to Save Children from Malnutrition and Worse
Many of the children brought to SOS Children’s Villages in Africa and Southeast Asia arrive malnourished and ill. Fed healthful meals by attentive SOS Mothers, they are gradually nursed back to health. They learn to laugh, and to see hope.
You can help spare a child from hunger and disease. Sponsor an SOS child.
