"Fully half of the deaths of children under age five around the world are caused directly or indirectly by malnutrition. The great majority of these children live in South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. Only a small percentage of the world's malnourished children have access to treatment: national health policies in numerous countries in the South only rarely address acute, severe malnutrition, even though the condition can be treated at minimal cost and treatment does not pose any particular therapeutic problems. Health centers specializing in the treatment of malnutrition are sorely lacking in many countries. In a document released in 2008, Action Contre la Faim, the worldwide NGO known in English as Action Against Hunger, rightly protested: 'To end childhood malnutrition would be easy. We have to make it a priority. Yet many governments lack the will.'
"In all probability, since 2008, the situation has if anything grown worse. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, primary sanitation services have continued to deteriorate. In Bangladesh, where the number of malnourished children exceeds 400,000, there are only two hospitals capable of administering the care that can bring back to life a little boy or girl ravaged by a lack of vitamins and/or minerals.
"We must, moreover, not forget that malnutrition, like undernutrition, has severe psychological as well as physical consequences. The lack of macro- and micronutrients and the host of illnesses such deprivation entails cause anxiety, a permanent sense of shame, depression, an obsessive fear of each new day. How will a mother whose children cry from hunger at night, and who miraculously succeeds in borrowing a little bit of milk from her neighbor, be able to feed them tomorrow? How can she avoid going mad? What father, unable to feed his family, can fail to lose, in his own eyes, every last shred of his dignity? A family denied regular access to food, of adequate quality and in sufficient amounts, is a family destroyed. The tens of thousands of farmers in India who have committed suicide bear tragic witness to this harsh truth."
