Where collective consciousness does not reach, scientific analysis intervenes. To show-in a study signed by the secretaries-general of UNICEF, FAO, WFP and WHO published in The Lancet-how the food emergency now affects more than 54 million children under the age of 5. 7 million more than last year. Covid-19 hunger alone kills more than 10,000 babies each month, 52 percent of them in sub-Saharan Africa. And the survivors suffer irreparable damage, to body and mind development.
‘Failure of the global community to act now will have devastating long-term consequences for children, human capital and national economies.’ (1)
The prevalence of acute malnutrition among children under five-in 118 low- and middle-income countries, 80 percent of them in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa-is estimated to increase significantly (+14.3 percent, 2020 over 2019). An entirely predictable carnage, followingUNICEF’s call for Humanitarian Action in late 2019 and FAO’s repeated warnings since the dawn of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Hunger from Covid-19
‘Seven months have passed since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and it is becoming increasingly clear that the repercussions of the pandemic are causing more harm to children than the disease itself. Household poverty and food insecurity rates have increased.
Essential nutrition services and supply chains have been disrupted. Food prices have skyrocketed. As a result, the quality of children’s diets has declined and malnutrition rates will increase’ (Henrietta Fore, UNICEF, director general). (2)
Covid starvation induced by the global economic recession has led, as we have seen, to soaring prices that have made food unaffordable for growing segments of populations. (3)
The lockdown drastically reduced access to school meals for more than 370 million children who drew their only source of adequate nutrition from them. Fear of contagions then collapsed access to health facilities where emergency nutritional care is provided. Hospitalizations to treat severe acute malnutrition in children declined everywhere, with peaks in Haiti (-73%), Afghanistan and Kenya (-40%).
$2.4 billion needed
‘Some strategies of response to COVID-19, including physical distancing, school closures, trade restrictions, and country lockdowns are hampering food systems by disrupting the production, transportation, and sale of nutritious, fresh, and affordable food, forcing millions of families to rely on nutrient-poor alternatives.’ (The Lancet).
By the end of 2020, humanitarian agencies (UNICEF, FAO, WFP, WHO) need $2.4 billion to protect maternal and child nutrition, prevent and treat malnutrition, and prevent loss of life. These sums are used to carry out four life-saving interventions:
– Prevention of malnutrition in at-risk children,
– Treatment of child malnutrition,
– Six-month vitamin A supplement for children 6 months to 5 years old (90 percent coverage),
– Promotion campaigns to support breastfeeding for children up to 23 months old.
Other needs to be addressed
UNICEF, FAO, WFP and WHO also urge that appropriate measures be taken, to address the underlying needs:
– Safeguard access to nutritious, safe and affordable diets. Pointing to food markets as essential services,
– Invest in maternal and infant nutrition and prevent inappropriate marketing of breast milk substitutes,
– Reactivate and expand services for early identification and treatment of acute malnutrition.
– Maintain the provision of nutritious and safe school meals in order to reach the most vulnerable children. Also through home deliveries, take-out rations, cash contributions or vouchers when schools are closed.
Sustainable Development, Smoking Goals
17 SDGs (
Sustainable Development Goals
) were included in the UN 2030 Agenda by resolution 25.9.15 of its General Assembly. The first two Sustainable Development Goals pertain to theeradication of extreme poverty and hunger. But no country in the world-except the People’s Republic of China alone, which is now close to achieving these and other SDGs-has made any progress in this regard.
The report Food Security and Nutrition 2020 (FAO, IFAD, WFP, UNICEF, WHO)-along with that of Special Rapporteur to the UN on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston (6.7.20)-. highlights so how 3.5 billion human beings are now in conditions of extreme hunger and poverty. Equally tragic are the shortages of drinking water and sanitation services, themselves the causes of more than 1,200 child deaths each day. (4)
Unseen aid and migration
US$7 billion in international aid, according to World Bank researchers (2017), would be needed annually to provide the promised food security for everyone on the planet by 2030. (5) Added to these is the need to raise 2.4 billion, in the coming months, to curb the child slaughter.
Aid , however, has not been forthcoming. Neither from the G7 nor from the European Union. Migration is increasing and member states are moving independently to set up agreements with old and new colonies, in the powder keg of the Mediterranean where more arms are exported than food.
The rhetoric of politicians in Italy has, in turn, shifted from ‘Let’s help them in their homes‘ (which, moreover, has never had any concrete feedback) to the need to counter ‘economic migrants. How else?
Dario Dongo and Sabrina Bergamini
Notes
(1) Henrietta H Fore, Qu Dongyu, David Beasley, Teodros Ghebreyesus (2020). Child malnutrition and COVID-19: the time to act is now. The Lancet. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)31648-2
(2) UNICEF. The COVID-19 pandemic is undermining nutrition worldwide. Press release 28.7.20,
https://www.unicef.it/doc/9999/la-pandemia-da-covid-19-sta-minando-la-nutrizione-in-tutto-il-mondo.htm
(3) GDP per capita in low- and middle-income countries is estimated to fall between 6 and 9 percent, on average, in the 12 months following the declaration of the pandemic. See footnote 1
(4) Report 28.7.20 Special Rapporteur to the UN on the rights to water and sanitation Léo Heller. V. https://www.greatitalianfoodtrade.it/idee/acqua-e-igiene-governi-e-caporali
(5) Meera S, Kakietek J, Dayton Eberwein J, Walters D. (2017). An investment framework for nutrition: reaching the global targets for stunting, anemia, breastfeeding, and wasting. Directions in development-human development. World Bank, Washington, DC
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
Journalist. Consumption, rights, nutrition, social, environment. Head of Consumers Help. She collaborated with ResetDOC, Il Riformista, La Nuova Ecologia, IMGPress.
