In some regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, stagnation of nutritional improvement combined with a rapid rise in population has resulted in an actual increase in the total number of malnourished children. Currently, over two-thirds of the world's malnourished children live in Asia (especially south Asia), followed by Africa and Latin America.
Yes I do agree that sometimes the television and newspapers only bring out the worst causes as I have experienced this myself. Such as now all that is on in the news is about America and Iraq but I’m sure that there are other things that are also going on in the world which we would all be interested in knowing about so yes they do sometimes exaggerate. But poverty in Africa is one of the worst cases of poverty I have ever seen.
The people in Britain on average have a calorie intake on 3 317 calories per day where as in poorer less economically developed countries such as Ethiopia the calorie intake per day is only 1610.
You have also written that some people can’t afford a car at the end of the first paragraph. Yes I also agree that quite a few people do not have cars but just because they don’t have cars it does not make them poor and living in poverty does it. I mean maybe some of these people who don’t have cars choose not to have cars. I have met a few people who don’t have cars and they are perfectly normal people who get by in life the same way that we do. Whether or not we own a car or not is only relative poverty what you have to understand is the fact that people in Africa are living in absolute poverty. A car is not a basic need in life it is more of a luxury so I don’t see why you are involving cars into this letter regarding poverty. I mean I’m sure if you try you can also get by without a car don’t you see how much pollution is caused because of people using cars for short journeys?
I do agree also with your quote about reading that there is enough food in the world for everybody to eat but think of it like this the MEDC’s take up about 20% of the world but get 80% of the food whilst the LEDC’s take up 80% of the world but only get 20% of the food, so because of this of course there is a reason for them to be starving.
An estimated 174 million under-five children in the developing world are malnourished as indicated by low weight for age, and 230 million are underdeveloped. Malnutrition results in poor physical and cognitive development as well as lower resistance to illness. It is now recognized that 6.6 million out of 12.2 million deaths among children under-five - or 54% of young child mortality in developing countries -
is associated with malnutrition. In addition to the human suffering, the loss in human potential translates into social and economic costs that no country can afford.
Over 800 million people still cannot meet basic needs for energy and protein, more than two thousand million people lack essential micronutrients, and hundreds of millions suffer from diseases caused by unsafe food or by unbalanced food intake.
You say that you went on holiday to Tanzania and didn’t see anyone who was poor and your food was excellent well what do you expect you and many other people who go their on holiday to sea the safari parks pay a lot of money and that money goes into the food that they make for the tourists to eat. Think of it like this if you owned a hotel in Tanzania where the scenery and wildlife was beautiful but the poverty was high you wouldn’t exactly let these poor innocent people come near your hotel would you? No of course you wouldn’t I mean you wouldn’t want the tourists to be scared of would you? What you have to try and understand is that the people of Tanzania don’t have the same money as us to pay for the quality food like you get served in hotels.
These poor of Africa as I said before suffer from malnutrition and are highly underweight so they are not exactly going to be as healthy as us are they?. They have to walk for miles and miles every morning to get some water and even then the water is not clean so they are going to get so many different diseases, I’m sure you can imagine the type of water these poor people would have to drink and if we tried it for even a day we would get sick too. In Britain on average there are 300 people per one doctor and in Africa there are 32 500 people per one doctor. That is 32 200 people more. I mean if they got clean water supplies and healthier food then maybe they would be as healthy as us then they would maybe be able to attend school to become literate like us and then they could become a doctor or something. If they had these clean water supplies etc then maybe people wouldn’t have to visit doctor too much and then also maybe there would be more doctors to look after these ill people. How can these people be healthy though if all they eat is the crops that they grow and even from the crops they grow they have to sell so that they can earn money to make a living? Unlike people in more economically developed countries these people only eat vegetables and they need meat and fish etc to help absorb protein and iron in their bodies and to have healthy blood no wonder these people are highly underweight.
You say camping is fun but try camping everyday for about 2 months and I’m sure you will get fed up. And if we had sun all year round then we would get sick of it too. The houses that these African people live in are huts made of straw etc. These houses have no central heating and hardly any of them have a supply of clean water or gas coming to their homes.
Yes I agree that draughts and floods are keeping these people in African countries poor and yes we have had droughts here before but the government helped us here by giving us shelter when they had droughts the government in Africa don’t help these people.
These poor countries do have a lot of land and they do try and make a living with the land that they own but the crops that they grow, they need to sell it and the money they get doesn’t really go to them because of all the debts they owe to other countries. If they don’t trade then how will they get the money and repay the debts. Some countries have even cancelled they’re debt with Africa as they have noticed it was too hard for them to pay but how can all countries think the same I’m sure you can understand the reason why the cant eat all that they grow.
Charities like Children in Need, NSPCC and even Comic Relief have proved very beneficial in catering for the needs of these people. However they rely on the generous funds that we donate. If we don’t give money to them then who will?
We need to help these poor people. Try putting yourself in their shoes and maybe even try going yourself to see how these people live. I mean if we give even five pounds to these charities it will make a significant difference and I’m sure we can spare that little bit of extra cash. Just think about it, we can help these people make water wells so they get a fresh clean supply of water. And every thing will make a difference so
Remember, every little penny counts!
Yours faithfully
Kulsum Patel
Bibliography/Evaluation
For my humanities coursework I had to reply to an angry reporter. I found this coursework quite motivating.
I did a lot of research from books such as:
- Life in Africa and
- The Worlds Poorest Countries
I also went on the internet to find some information where I went on and searched for the info I need. Taken as a whole this coursework was quite interesting and I found out a lot of thing I didn’t know which was appealing.
