Definition:
A state of extreme hunger resulting from lack of essential nutrients over a prolonged period.
Statistics:
- globally over 9 million people die each year from hunger and malnutrition
- 6 million children under the age of 5 die every year from a hunger-related cause; every day more than 16,000 children die, one child every 5 seconds
- about 850 million people globally are malnourished; 799 million of them live in the developing world; more than 153 million of them are children under the age of 5
- gender is the most significant reason for malnutrition among girls
- 54 nations currently do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities; most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa
Personal Impact Story
She was born hungry. The first thought she had was for food, it formed like a question mark on her brow. Her skin wrinkled in frustration at her mother’s dried up breast. She was unable to understand that her mother had no food to eat either, she was too young to be told her country has no food. Another hungry newborn: malnutrition and food shortage her birthright.
She would soon learn that tears could change nothing, no matter how many she poured out upon the dry ground. Her tears, though they fell to the earth, would not sufficiently water the drought-ridden land to bring forth fruit. Fruit to feed her hungry family. The energy she spent to cry and complain would only leave her with greater pangs of hunger.
Her mother, at first, did not name her, believing she would die like so many other newborns. But she lived. So she was named Mara – ‘bitterness’, for, her life would be marked by a series of bitter rituals, rights of passage meant to measure her ability at survival. Her mother named her Mara knowing her little body would need to fight against other invisible predators hungry for her starving flesh: malaria, anemia, tuberculosis. Mara was born into an unforgiving land, with not a few strikes against her.
Mara’s stomach is swollen and bloated by the final irony of starvation. Her empty stomach looks well fed, pushes itself out to the world as if were full of food. At three years old, she is pregnant with the hope of eating. She laughs when she is told there live children in the world who are not born hungry. Surely, she thinks, there are men and boys who do not starve, who are fed food like the men and boys in her country.
But her mother insists that somewhere there are little girls who do not starve, who eat three meals a day, who smile and laugh regularly, and have energy left over to play. Girls who live in a land where there is food. Mara wonders what it would be like to see these strange girls, touch their flat bellies, prod and poke in wonder that she cannot count each one of their ribs. She dreams of those little girls at night, and the thought of their bodies frightens her.
*the above story is based on facts but is fictional, for actual statistics order 30 Days of Prayer for the Voiceless today
