Does a child die of hunger every 10 seconds?

BBC: Does a child die of hunger every 10 seconds?

But another major group that tackles food
problems around the world, the United Nations World Food Programme
(WFP), now disapproves of this tactic [a child dies every X seconds].

"There's a real temptation to use those kinds of statistics
because they really do grab the headlines – you can't ignore that
because it's such a horrifying image," says Jane Howard, from the WFP.

But, she says, it is "a bit misleading". …

… she argues, "the science is actually saying something quite different".

So what is the science saying? Well, if, to you, the claim
that one child is dying every 10 seconds because of hunger conjures up
images of starving children, you might be surprised.

In most cases, that's not what's happening.

"There are certainly extreme circumstances where children
starve to death – and I'm thinking of the recent famine in parts of
Somalia," Howard says.

"But the truth is that the vast majority of those numbers
that we're talking about, are children who, because they haven't had the
right nutrition in the very earliest parts of their lives, are really
very susceptible to infectious diseases, like measles.

"A child that's had good nutrition would just
shrug it off, but for a child that's really fragile and has a
compromised immune system it becomes really life threatening."

The If campaign highlights an important issue, but is it
wrong to use the word "hunger" if it might inaccurately suggest children
are starving to death? …

… The fact that poor nutrition is identified as an underlying cause of
death means that there's also some double counting going on. When you
hear that one child dies every few seconds from water-related diseases,
for example- or from poverty – some of these children will be the same
ones that are said to be dying every few seconds from hunger.

Another surprise is to discover who these children are and
that they are often not even, as the adverts sometimes put it, "going to
bed hungry".

Most of the nutrition-related deaths are in countries that
are not suffering from famine or conflict, according to Professor Robert
Black of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the
United States, who calculated the three million figure that the
10-seconds statistic is based on.

"These are not the poorest countries in the world. They are
countries such as India or Nigeria or many other countries in Asia or
Africa that really could do better – that have the resources to feed
children within the country.

"Certainly the poorest have the greatest problems with
undernutrition, but even then there might be sufficient food to feed
children. The difficulty is achieving a high enough quality diet – a
diet that is dominated by cereals or starches would not be a high enough
quality diet to achieve the nutrition that's needed in the first two
years of life."

In most cases, the problem could be resolved through nutrition education, Black says. …

… In some cultures, women don't get to eat the best food in the
household, which can mean children are born underweight. Milk and meat
may also be avoided for cultural reasons, as they are in parts of India
for example. And sometimes it's just not fully appreciated how important
fruit and vegetables are.

A quarter of the deaths can be attributed to inadequate breast-feeding,
Professor Black estimates, -with many families not realising that, up to
six months of age, babies need to be exclusively fed on breast milk for
the nutrients it provides, but also because it protects them from
exposure to contaminated food. …