Consider for more than a breath that about 50% of children under 5 years of age in Bangladesh are malnourished. That hard to picture statistic masks more than 8 million hungry, often starving children. These babies often do not eat for stretches, born without fault in a country where the median age floats around 22. In that time, while we wrap our throwaway days and nights in Burger King binges, whatever these sickly children do eat does not nourish them.
The numbers suggests– and it is true: Bangladeshis are a young people and the country can succeed socio-economically if and only if the sitting government and its successors can solve the scourge of severe malnourishment.
Consider this intergenerational story: Malnourished babies, in quick succession, become malnourished young mothers, as if they were replacements on some toxic assembly plant, who then bore through the experience of watching their own hungry babies die. Both the sitting government and its opposition throw around some ad-jingle about the politics of hope. Can a people ‘hope’ themselves out of quicksand?
So it goes. But please pay attention. Watch the excellent set of short documentaries on global malnutrition in Bangladesh and elsewhere, produced collaboratively by Doctors Without Borders and VII Photo Agency. Witness a child’s hunger and a mother’s confusion. And do something to staunch it.
At least sign a petition.
The short documentary you’ll see below is excellent, humane. After you’ve seen the video below please watch the other 6 videos, documenting similar, though no less heartbreaking stories in Djibouti, India, Mexico, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo and-I am distressed and ashamed that this is so–the United States of America.
