stunting | Refinery.tv

Malawi – where HALF of the children are stunted

This blog is one of several published in real time during the live event “nutrition for growth; beating hunger through business and science”. The rest of the blogs can be found by clicking the links at the bottom of the page. Some of those organisations supporting this movement are include The IF campaign, The ONE campaign DFID.

Joyce Banda’s own story is quite incredible. If you aren’t familiar with it, here’s a link to her wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Banda

She is the 4th president of Malawi, and the first female president, but presides over a country with terrible problems of poverty and hunger. Malawi has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world.

From SOS https://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/

1 in 5 children in Malawi is malnourished. An under-five mortality rate of 110 per 1,000 is still far too high, despite improvements in recent years*. Up to a million children in Malawi are growing up without one or both parents, 650,000 of the total due to HIV/AIDS.

*by contrast, in England and Wales that figure is just 4 out of 1000, compared to almost 1 in ten babies dying in Malawi.

Joyce Banda wants to “skill up” the nation and improve their ability (especially in rural areas) to make both their ability to grow food and their ability to profit from it, and therefore grow it sustainably in a way that will keep people, fed, in work and healthy. They have already set to work in bringing the infant mortality rate down from the figures quoted above (2006), it is now closer to 80 – 1000.

Why the time to act is now: https://wp.me/p3scvU-lT

Mark Walport: https://wp.me/p3scvU-lR

Ireland remembers: https://wp.me/p3scvU-lN

Malawi: https://wp.me/p3scvU-lK

It’s not difficult to make a difference: https://wp.me/p3scvU-lK

Some bloke called Dave https://wp.me/p3scvU-lr

Unicef’s 1000 Days https://wp.me/p3scvU-lm

Can science end starvation? https://wp.me/p3scvU-lg

Frank and Mwajuma (and some bloke called Dave)

A heartfelt personal account of what if feels like to be hungry by young Tanzanian’s Frank and Mwajuma.

You can see from the picture that Frank is of slight build. He is small for his age (16) and slenderly built.

You don’t get big and strong he says, without good food. Stunted growth is a real thing. It affects many many people the world over.

The “senior cabinet minister” called to the podium is DAVE!

Mr Cameron is talking about a 165 MILLION children who by the age of 2 have already been so badly malnourished, that they will never achieve their full expected height or weight.

DC says there are 3 questions?

1. Does aid really work?

Yes it does – we are seeing the fastest redcution in poverty in history. Child deaths are down by half and 4 million lives saved by vaccination. That’s a resounding YES, but there are still too many dying. We cannot stop here.

2. Why does the UK always have to be out in front when it comes to aid?

Dave says its because of the way the British people are, and how we respond when we hear of disaster and poverty. It says something about our standing in the world. But its not just about our hearts, its our heads too. If we invest in countries before they get broken, we might not end of dealing with the problems afterwards. We are one of few countries who agree to spend 0.7% on development. If we keep doing this we can help 37 MILLION children. Its less than 1 pence a day for us. Its a good investment.

3. The problems are never solved, why does it just go on and on?

We have earned the right to say we should do things differently. Different in business, different in science. Harvesting power of enterprise and for science, harnessing the power of innovation – see the sweet potato* that has been engineered to provide Vitamin A.

*more on the sweet potato coming soon!

Bye bye Dave!

A PDF of the executive summary can be viewed HERE