• Lack of food stunts Chad children, damages minds

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Seven-year-old Achta stands in the door of her family's cooking hut, as her mother prepares dinner over a wood fire by the light of a flashlight, in the village of Louri, in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 1. Achta's birth seven years ago coincided with the first major drought to hit the Sahel this decade. Climate change has meant that the normally once-a-decade droughts are now coming every few years. The droughts decimated her family's herd. With each dead animal, they ate less. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

    When a child doesn't receive enough calories, the body prioritizes the needs of vital organs over growth. What this does to the brain is dramatic. A 2007 medical study in Spain compared the CAT scan of a normal 3-year-old child and that of a severely malnourished one.

    The circumference of the healthy brain is almost twice as large. Presented side by side, it's like looking at a cantaloupe sitting next to a softball.

    -- Reported by the Associated Press

    Read the full story.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    A woman walks toward a well through clouds of dust raised by cattle in the wadi outside Louri village in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 1. For generations, the people of this bone-dry region lived off their herds, but climate change has meant that the normally once-a-decade droughts are now coming every few years.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Teacher Djobelsou Guidigui Eloi works with a student at the blackboard in Louri village's school hut in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 2. Many of the children, unable to read, attempted to pass the lesson by memorizing the sounds and their order on the blackboard. In 2011, 78 boys and girls enrolled in the equivalent of first grade in Chad's school system. Of those children, 42 failed the test to graduate into the next grade, a percentage that almost exactly mirrors the number of children stunted in the county.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Young men walk in the wadi alongside Louri village, in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 2. Climate change has meant that the normally once-a-decade droughts are now coming every few years, decimating food production.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Health workers measure the height of a boy during a mobile clinic to identify cases of underweight, stunted, or malnourished children, in Michemire, in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 4.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    A boy watches as women pump water from the village borehole in Louri, in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 3.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    A little girl cries as she is weighed as part of a mobile nutrition clinic to examine local children and identify cases of underweight, stunted, or malnourished children, in Michemire, in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 4.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Children gather under a sole shade tree as they take a break from class outside their schoolhouse made of reeds in the village of Louri, in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 2.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    In this Nov. 1, 2012 photo, 7-year-old Achta, right, walks with her mother Fatme Ousmane in the village of Louri in the Mao region of Chad. Achta's birth seven years ago coincided with the first major drought to hit the Sahel this decade. Climate change has meant that the normally once-a-decade droughts are now coming every few years. The droughts decimated her family's herd. With each dead animal, they ate less. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Seven-year-old Achta looks at the blackboard during class in the village of Louri in the Mao region of Chad, Nov. 2. In this village where malnutrition has become chronic, children have simply stopped growing. In the county that includes Louri, 51.9 percent of children are stunted, one of the highest rates in the world, according to a survey published by UNICEF - more than half the children in the village.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Seven-year-old Achta, her older brother, and their mother Fatme Ousmane share a dinner of rice and meat, a rare treat, leftovers from the recent Eid holiday, in the village of Louri, in the Mao region of Chad. The droughts decimated her family's herd. With each dead animal, they ate less.

     

  • Rafiq Maqbool / AP

    Malnourished children eat a meal at the Apanalaya center, an organization working for the betterment of slum children, in Mumbai, India on Oct. 9, 2012. The United Nations now says its 2009 headline-grabbing announcement that 1 billion people in the world were hungry was off-target and that the number is actually more like 870 million.

    One in eight of world population going hungry: UN

    Reuters reports — One out of every eight people in the world is chronically undernourished, the United Nations' food agencies said on Tuesday, warning that progress to reduce hunger has slowed since 2007/08 when high food prices sparked riots in several poor countries.

    In their latest report on food insecurity, the UN agencies estimated that 868 million people were suffering hunger in 2010-2012, or about 12.5 percent of the world's population, down more sharply than previously estimated from about 1 billion, or 18.6 percent in 1990-92.

    The new figures are lower than the last estimates for recent years that pegged the number of hungry people at 925 million in 2010 and 1.02 billion in 2009. Read the full story.

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  • In Niger, child marriage on rise due to hunger

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Sarey Amadou, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20. Even though the boy she had a crush on offered a dowry for her, her father insisted that she marry her first cousin, who lives several hours away in the larger village of Guidan Roumdji. Even during the best of times, one out of every three girls in Niger marries before her 15th birthday, a rate of child marriage among the highest in the world, according to a UNICEF survey. Now this custom is being layered on top of a crisis. At times of severe drought, parents pushed to the wall by poverty and hunger are marrying their daughters at even younger ages. A girl married off is one less mouth to feed, and the dowry money she brings in goes to feed others.

    "Families are using child marriage, as an alternative, as a survival strategy to the food insecurity," says Djanabou Mahonde, UNICEF's chief child protection officer in Niger.

    This drought-prone country of 16 million is so short on food that it is ranked dead last by international aid organization Save the Children in the percentage of children receiving a "minimum acceptable diet."

    -- Reported by the Associated Press

    Read the full story.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Children help prepare the evening meal in a courtyard in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 21. In Hawkantaki, it is the rhythm of the land that shapes the cycle of life and crucially, when they marry their daughters.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Young girls stand in a field of millet outside the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19. In a normal year, the green shoots vaulted out of the ground and rose as high as 13 feet, a wall tall enough to conceal an adult man. This time, they only reached the waist.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Rama, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18. Her mother says she is 12. Her husband brought a 100,000 francs ($200) dowry for her in the fall of 2011. Although her mother denies that poverty played a role in precipitating the marriage, Rama says her family would normally have waited at least one more year. "It's because the rainy season was not good that I was married off, and because we are very poor."

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Children play in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Shoubalee Lawali, 15, from Hawkantaki, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Kintee, Niger, July 19. Her husband is in his mid-20s. She was taken to his village, Kintee, where she now lives with him. "My father has three wives and 23 kids. There are lots of problems at home. I think it was for this reason that they married me."Last year, before the start of the harvest, there were 10 girls in Hawkantaki between the ages of 11 and 15. By spring 2012, seven were married, and another two are engaged.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Elders gather for prayer at the mosque in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18. In Niger, the legal age of marriage is 15. The law, however, only applies for civil ceremonies officiated by the state.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A man and a boy exit after prayer at the mosque in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 18.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Sadiya Oumarou, 15, originally from Hawkantaki, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Tabouka, Niger, July 19. Sadiya was the first of the girls to be married, leaving Hawkantaki for the village of Tabouka last year. One by one, her girlfriends were all married off except one. Like the others, she did not have her period when she became a new bride.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Children walk in a courtyard in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Aicha, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Kaihi, Niger, July 20. Originally from Hawkantaki, Aicha has been married for seven months.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Young girls stare at a visitor in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 19.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Marliya, 14, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20. Marliya's family was paid just 50,000 francs ($100) for her dowry. Her father used up the money long before her wedding, and she was sent to her husband's home with only a tarp to sleep on.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Young women walk past a group of men recharging their cell phones under a tree in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger, July 20.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Zali Idy, 12, poses in her bedroom in the remote village of Hawkantaki, Niger. Zali was married in 2011. In January 2012, soon after she turned 12, she was carried on a bullock cart to her 23-year-old husband's home.

     

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  • Sale of Niger nomad's last camel is sign of hunger

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Helpers prepare just-purchased camels for their new owners to take with them at the livestock market in the desert village of Sakabal, Niger. Eighty percent of Niger's people and 100 percent of the landlocked nation's rural population depend on livestock, including camel, cows, sheep and goats, for some part of their income. For generations, nomads have lived in a precarious equilibrium with the sky above them. When the first rains come, they head north toward the Sahara desert, where the grass is said to be saltier, packed with minerals. They time their movements according to the clouds, waiting for the second major downpour, before making a U-turn to head back to the greener south. If they miscalculate, they can end up stranded. As the grass turns yellow, their animals become too weak to walk.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A Tuareg man smiles as his camel rises from lying down at the livestock market in the desert village of Sakabal, Niger.

    In a part of the world where the worth of a man is measured by his animals, Tuareg nomad Soumaila Wantala has come to this market to do the unthinkable: Sell his last camel.

    He crouches in the shade of a thorn tree as traders haggle over the 4-year-old male animal, Yedi. When the sale is complete, Yedi rears his enormous neck and lets out a cry, like the deep, subterranean call of a whale. It takes three men to drag the camel out of the arena, as if he understands the fate that has just befallen his master.

    -- Reported by the Associated Press

    Read the full story.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Herdsmen gather at the livestock market.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Tuareg nomads arrive at the market to trade livestock in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A Tuareg nomad carrying his traditional sword has a hook fit to his camel at the market in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A Peul merchant relaxes on his stick by the door of a house while attending the livestock market in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Men walk through the grain market in the desert village of Sakabal, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Tuareg nomads carrying their traditional swords and good luck amulets around their neck, shop for fabric and other goods while attending the livestock market in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A Nigerian taxman records the sale of a camel at the market in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A rare vehicle carries villagers back to Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A Tuareg nomad, carrying his traditional sword, walks past a handler pulling just-purchased sheep to their new owner at the livestock market in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Sold goats are loaded on the rooftop of a truck in the desert village of Sakabal, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A herdsman's family heats up water for dinner in the fields near Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A young herdsman walks through his cattle outside Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Birds fly over grazing cows in the green sandy plains near Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Young herdsmen show their henna stained hands, sign of a recent wedding celebration, as they gather at the livestock market in the desert village of Sakabal, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    A Tuareg nomad, carrying his traditional sword, rides his camel as he leaves the livestock market in Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    Livestock merchants leave Bermo, Niger.

    Jerome Delay / AP

    In this picture taken Monday, July 16, 2012, nomads stop for the night between Dakoro and Bermo, Niger.

     

  • Drought weakens communities in Senegal as hunger sets in

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Women crowd a well in the village of Kiral, near Goudoude Diobe in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. Wells in the area are often 75-meters deep, and aren't always able to produce enough water for residents' daily needs.

    Since late 2011, aid groups have been sounding the alarm, warning that devastating drought has again weakened communities where children already live perilously close to the edge of malnutrition.The situation is most severe in Niger, Chad and in Mali, but this time it has also pervaded northern Senegal, the most prosperous and stable country in the Sahel.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Mariam Orgho, 3, looks at her mother, Coumba Seck, as she cooks the one small meal of the day for her extended family.

    Many sub-Saharan economies are growing fast but the growth rates have not translated into significant hunger reduction, said UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.

    Sub-Saharan Africa's growth, now around 4 percent, is accelerating faster than the rest of the world excluding China and India, according to UNDP statistics.

    According to the agency's African Development Report, nearly 218 million people on the continent are undernourished and 55 million children are malnourished, a figure that is projected to rise.

    -- Reported by the Associated Press

    Read more

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Two-year-old Aliou Seyni Diallo collapses in tears after not eating since the day before, inside his family's yard in the village of Goudoude Diobe, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. A neighbor stepped in to help Aliou's struggling mother, giving the boy a bowl of dry couscous to stop his tears.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Men share a meager breakfast of thin porridge and instant coffee, during a break in building a mud-brick house for a neighbor, in the village of Goudoude Diobe, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. With little paid work available, a group of village men, including professional masons, have banded together to build houses for free for several residents.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    A girl follows a village path through a landscape dotted with thorny scrub brush, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    A herder stands on an empty water trough as he surveys his animals, in the village of Mbelone in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal. Some residents spend hours each day pulling up water bucket by bucket from the village's 75-meter deep well, but the well isn't always able to produce enough water for the daily needs of the residents and their herds of cattle and other livestock.

    Rebecca Blackwell / AP

    Herder Oumar Ba walks away after indicating where one of his cows died, he says, of hunger, outside Dikka village, in the Matam region of northeastern Senegal.

     

  • India's hunger 'shame': 3,000 children die every day, despite economic growth

    Severely malnourished girl Rajni, 2, is weighed by health workers in Madhya Pradesh, India, February 1.

    By Reuters

    Crying as she is put on an electronic scale, two-year-old Rajini's naked shriveled frame casts a dark shadow over a rising India, where millions of children have little to eat.

    The children are scrawny, listless and sick in this run-down nutrition clinic in central India with its intermittent power supply. If they survive they will grow up shorter, weaker and less smart than their better-fed peers.

    Rajini weighs 5 kg (11 lb), about half of what she should.

    "She's as light as a leaf, this can't be good," says her grandmother, Sushila Devi, poking her rib-protruding stomach in the clinic in Shivpuri district in Madhya Pradesh state.

    Almost as shocking as India's high prevalence of child malnutrition is the country's failure to reduce it, despite the economy tripling between 1990 and 2005 to become Asia's third largest and annual per capita income rising to $489 from $96.

    1 in 4 children malnourished, global report says

    A government-supported survey last month said 42 percent of children under five are underweight - almost double that of sub-Saharan Africa - compared to 43 percent five years ago.

    The statistic - which means 3,000 children dying daily due to illnesses related to poor diets - led Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to admit malnutrition was "a national shame" and was putting the health of the nation in jeopardy.

    "It is a national shame. Child nutrition is a marker of the many things that are not going right for the poor of India," said Purnima Menon, research fellow on poverty, health and nutrition at the Institute of Food Policy Research Institute.

    India's efforts to reduce the number of undernourished kids have been largely hampered by blighting poverty where many cannot afford the amount and types of food they need.

    Adnan Abidi / Reuters

    Women hold their severely malnourished children as they stand outside the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre of Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, India, February 1.

    Poor hygiene, low public health spending and little education and awareness have not helped. Age-old customs discriminating against women such as child marriage have also contributed, but are far harder to tackle, say experts.

    In addition, shoddy management of food stocks, subsidized carbohydrate-rich food that fuel and fill the poor rather than truly nourishing them and real shortages in its poorest states have worsened the problem.

    At the Shivpuri clinic, health worker Rekha Singh Chauhan tends to emaciated young children in a ward with a ganglion of electrical wires running cross its paint-chipped walls.

    "We only have a handful to take care of now, but come April, the cases will shoot up," says Chauhan, adding that diseases such as diarrhea and malaria will cause an influx of sick underweight children with the onset of summer.

    "The situation becomes bad. Three children are made to share a bed and many have to sleep on the floor."

    That picture jars with an India clocking enviable 8-9 percent growth over the last five years that has put money in the pockets of millions of its people and fuelled demand for everything from cars and computers to clothes and fancy homes.

    It has also catapulted the country onto the world stage, boosting its claim for a bigger role on forums such as the U.N. Security Council. This month, it moved closer to buying new fighter jets worth a whopping $15 billion.

    Adnan Abidi / Reuters

    Four-month-old Vishakha, who weighs 2.3 kg (5 lbs) and suffers from severe malnutrition, rests on a bed next to her mother at the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centre, Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh, India on February 1.

    Yet while the urban middle classes dine in swanky shopping malls where eateries offer everything from sushi to burritos, millions of children are dying due to a lack of food.

    Last month's report by the Indian charity Naandi Foundation, the first comprehensive data since a 2005/6 study, said India's "nutrition crisis" is an attributable cause for up to half of all child deaths.

    Yet India's public spending on health, estimated at 1.2 percent of its GDP in 2009, is among the lowest in the world.

    Remembering India's first woman photojournalist

    "This isn't a quick-fix that we're looking at here, it's not a magic bullet," said Jasmine Whitbread, CEO of Save the Children International.

    "Not just in India, but in countries around the world, we know that you can't just rely on trickle down. There have to be policies in place, there have got to be political choices that prioritize malnutrition."

    In Shivpuri, an impoverished tribal-dominated district in Madhya Pradesh state, that reality is on full display.

    The region's malnutrition level for children under five matches the national average, but child mortality rates are worse at 103 deaths per 1,000. The national average is 66 deaths per 1,000, according to U.N. children's agency, Unicef.

    Most of the children here are from India's most marginalized and poorest communities, such as tribals and lower castes where literacy is poor and poverty high.

    Their mothers are themselves often undernourished, forced into early marriage when they reach puberty, and give birth to underweight babies with weak immune systems.

    Illiteracy or lack of awareness takes its toll as well. These mothers do not breastfeed, offering buffalo milk and contaminated water instead and making their children prone to illnesses like diarrhea, which prevents nutrient absorption.

    Mostly living on less than $2 a day, these families can hardly afford anything beyond wheat chapatis that are devoid of much-needed protein and other nutrients.

    Soapy milk, toxic apples: food safety in India

    India's neglect of its young - 48 percent are stunted, 20 percent wasted and 70 percent anemic - will have serious repercussions. The World Bank says malnutrition in the poorest countries slashes around 3 percent from annual economic growth.

    In comparison, neighboring China has already achieved its target on malnutrition and under-five child mortality goals as its economic growth has been more broad-based, focusing on health, sanitation and small holder production.

    While India has several schemes already running to battle malnutrition, the Indian government is now vaunting a multi-billion-dollar food subsidy program as a possible solution.

    But the Food Security Bill, which guarantees cut-price rice and wheat to 63.5 percent of the population may be more a political gimmick, experts worry, than about providing nutritious food to those who need it most.

    "The Food Security Bill is a very good development, but it is a food security bill, not a nutrition security bill," said Lawrence Haddad, director of the U.K.-based Institute of Development Studies.

    For the children at Shivpuri's nutrition centre, government plans mean little unless they put enough of the right food in their stomachs.

    "You see her arms? They are almost the width of my thumb," says Jharna, as she carried her limp, emaciated one-year-old grand-daughter, Sakshi, into the clinic. "She is too weak. She can't even sit by herself."

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