For Starving Children, a Bite of Hope

What kind of parent allows a child to go hungry? I’d be doing anything, any job even resort to stealing food before this happened. If you can’t feed them do NOT have them.

What is not mentioned is that plumpy nut often ends up being sold in the black market. In South Sudan you find it sold in local markets where there is little other food. I worked for Action Against Hunger and also in primary healthcare. Plumpy nut like most medicine distributed in poor rural areas ends up being sold. People who have nothing have to make hard choices and may have other family members that are also underfed. GIving plumpy nut to community health workers is better than nothing but not a silver bullet solution. Moreover, Plumpynut is produced in Europe and is expensive due tp patent rights. West Africa, DRC and other countries produce peanuts and could produce plumpy nut far cheaper. The transport costs in coutries like South Sudan are massive. When I worked there we had to travel by helicopter, so just getting plumpy nut to rural areas costs a ton. That is why you need to also look at the overall food security situation of the commmunity. Giving plumpy nut indefinately to children in conflict affected countries is not a long term solution.

The UN absolutely does have family planning programs. Their agencies also have programs on how to improve farming, reduce the impact of floods and droughts, end conflicts, build peace, curb climate change etc. But it's hard. It takes time. This Op-Ed, while well-intended, does the UN and it's specialized agencies a disservice. Almost naively, it focusses solely on the logistics aspect of a distribution operation, while in reality, the UN's answer to malnutrition and hunger is much more sophisticated and multipronged.

Another potentially helpful strategy in this approach that I was fortunate to recently witness first-hand is the decentralization and democratization of the manufacture and distribution of high-quality, good-tasting, low-cost food. Under the tireless efforts of Emerging Markets Director Taylor Quinn, JUST, Inc. (formerly Hampton Creek), a US-based food startup, has been training local workers in Liberia to produce and distribute a product called Power Gari, a nutrient-rich porridge formulated to help reduce malnutrition. The product consists of cassava, red palm oil, salt, soy protein, sugar, and added vitamins, and can be distributed dry for mixing with water as needed. By using local production with local ingredients and distribution, they give local people jobs and a greater investment in success, and reduce the possibility of theft and graft in the supply chain. And partnership with for-profit entities in such endeavors can help even out the funding issues in NGO work.

I am appalled by the comments on here. So self serving-- during Thanksgiving week too. Yes, population growth, sex education of BOTH sexes ,needs to occur. BUT the starving children need HELP now and not be condemned to DEATH as some seem to imply. God help us all with the attitudes shown here.

There is no reason for starvation on our planet. Starvation and malnutrition destroys the bodies of children. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chronic-malnutrition-madagascar-stunting_us_5772b07fe4b0f168323b1eb0 Saudi Arabia and the U.S. are using starvation of countries: Yemen, Iran, North Korea, Syria to force the submission of their leaders. It's not a carrot and stick. Let's call it what it is. Murder for gain. Murder to get rid of leaders that don't bow to the U.S. and other countries to steal their natural resources. As long as the U.S. voters watch the propaganda it won't end. Trump = Satan.

For Starving Children, a Bite of Hope, and For the Rest of Us Overpopulation Will Destroy This Planet!

Just because America gives you permission to practice gavage on yourself doesn't mean you should.

I see no mention here, in article or comments so far, of "theft", "security", or "black market". One of the reasons why mothers are required to bring their kids to a center is - if you just hand food, or medicine out- the local thugs, of whatever stripe, will immediately steal it; hijacking trucks, etc; even killing guards. Yes, it's a sad world where nasties steal food from starving children. And were big corporations steal all life savings from dying people who need their obscenely expensive drugs. The folks on the ground know all this; but it needs to be mentioned here, too. The food has to get to the children - safely. It has to be part of the plan; and safeguards - cost money too.

This knowledge leads to a question that is not asked. If we are able to save +50 million more children a year, with climate change and diminishing resources ever compounding which will result in more wars, etc. It is a never ending problem that keeps multiplying itself. I'm 68 and so I won't be involved in this problem, perhaps in the next hour or maybe I will live to be over 100? But I am still concerned with problem regarding the future of our species. I have long thought that our species often uses war as a form of population control. That seems counter productive to me. We feed children, educate them, train them and then send them to die in wars. With each generation we still have more people and the next generation does a *rince and repeat* but with less resources now. Shouldn't we be more concerned with teaching birth control methods and providing birth control aids as well as feeding those who are starving now? That seems much more humane than just breeding people to go and die in war while we continue to ignore climate change. It's like we are designing a Mad Max scenario for our grandchildren's' grand-kids.

If this Plumpy nut “medicine “ has been around for so long, why are we not using the simplicity of this food to help the hungry children in the US? Could this not be supplied to students as they arrive at schools across the country? Hungry students can’t learn!

Overpopulation and starvation go hand in hand. We need to shrink humanity's footprint through the education of women and the the encouragement of more people to not to have children.

Birth control is desperately needed in the 2nd and 3rd world, particularly with respect to gender rights for reproductive age females and sex education for males who don't seem able to grasp the user directions for condoms. It should not be the case that hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are annually handed out to every nation on the planet while American children are homeless and go hungry, while parents are under or unemployed.

How about Plumpy Nut For the kids and RBC for the mothers?

Nobody can fix everything, but everyone can do something. Instead of (or in addition to) material holiday gifts, consider donating to a charity or organization of yours or your giftee's choice, in their name. Who needs more stuff? Bonus pledge: avoid buying anything made of plastic.

Woops. Sorry the credit goes to Ms. Rosenberg! I thought it was Thomas Friedman.

Here's a more radical and cheaper idea. Just give out Plumpy'Nut for free to people in malnourished areas. Most parents can tell if their child needs extra calories. Even if the food is given to non malnourished children and adults, it may keep them from becoming such. Include comic on breastfeeding, water sanitation, and info on when, how, and where to get medical aid if needed.

Harsh as it may seem, the world cannot sustain the current rate of population growth. It is very sad that a million children die each year from malnutrition, and of course it is right to try to feed those children to prevent them from dying, but of equal importance, it seems to me, is education about birth control, and the distribution of condoms and other contraceptive devices.

Dr. Patricia Wolff, a St. Louis pediatrician, has been working tirelessly in Haiti through Meds and Foods For Kids (MFK), a nonprofit she founded. Her efforts have yielded amazing results there. Over 100,000 kids have been saved, not only by distributing this type of product, but by teaching people to grow peanuts and make the product in a factory that they themselves can operate. Maybe teaching people how to feed themselves, as well as feeding them, can be included in the UN’s approach. Pat L. Simons

The root cause of malnutrition is now and will continue to be a population growth without the means to support that population. First address the issue of population growth. The NGOs can hand out plumpy-nut from now to doomsday but if they refuse to address the problems of drought and climate change, they are wasting time and money. The idea of providing nourishment to starving children so that they will grow up to fight wars for water or ultimately drown in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe is not “humane” it is truly more callous than denying food aid altogether.

We need to remember that the mother (and father, if he's around) is also very hungry. Of course she can't walk for miles - she doesn't have the strength to do so. So feeding the family in their own home definitely sounds like a solution.

A major cause of malnutrition is infections. They impede the body's ability to absorb nutrients from the food eaten. Although this has been well-documented for decades, policy-makers ignore the need for improving sanitary conditions and instead focus on food supplements. Food supplements are more "photogenic" politically than sanitary improvements, but we are talking about people's lives here. Time to get serious.

Thank you to Mr. Friedman for keeping the issue of hunger in the news at Thanksgiving. Switching to a single therapeutic food and coordinating activity between Unicef and the Food Program so that moderately malnourished children get adequate nutrition, as opposed to severely malnourished children, does not address the issue of how the mothers get the Plumpy'nut in the first place. If distribution is the main cause of malnutrition, as this article cites, this new protocol is still not going to do much. I am not saying there is an easy solution --to eliminating this war and the cause for malnourishment, and the article did not promise miracles, but it's discouraging.

I cannot decide what is more upsetting, the fact that the Food Program and Unicef have known for years their systems are not effective for reaching these children or the fact that only one person even commented on this tragedy. Changes were made in 2011 and still things are getting worse. Now some pilot programs to study what might work better. How much more time needs to pass before this can be remedied? This is the saddest thing I have ever seen.

These authors are involved in great work, but they need to state more honestly the reasons for the growth in malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. It is not due to an increase in drought or war, but rather due to a population explosion in that region. That is the fundamental underlying cause, not drought or war.