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''' '' STARVING DYING
STUDENTS '' '''
THE TRAGEDY IS THAT THE PANDEMIC OF CORONAVIRUS is now being followed by the pandemic of hunger, disease and illiteracy.
! We are increasingly talking about a lost generation, whose potential maybe permanently quashed by this wretched pandemic.!
Lockdowns meant that casual laborers had no income, and tuberculosis patients couldn't get medicine. Campaigns to battle malaria, polio, AIDS and vitamin A deficiency were left in total disarray
STARVATION IS AGONIZING AND DEGRADING. You lose control of your bowels. Your skin peels off, your hair falls out, you hallucinate and you may go blind from lack of VITAMIN A.
WHILE you waste away, your body cannibalizes itself it consumes its own muscles, even the heart.
YET student Abdo Sayed, a 4-year-old boy so emaciated he weighed just 14 pounds, wasn't crying when he was brought to a hospital recently in Aden, Yemen. That's because children who are starving don't cry or even frown. Instead, they are eerily calm -
They appear apathetic, often expressionless. A body that is starving doesn't waste energy on tears. It directs every calorie to keep the major organs functioning.
Student Abdo died soon after arriving at the hospital. A photographer named Giles Clarke, a friend of mine whom I met on my last trip to Yemen, was there again and captured the scene.
His photograph, including those with with his column, are painful to witness, but many families, including Abdo's, allow photography - indeed, want photos to be circulated - because they hope that the world will understand that children are dying needlessly of hunger, and that help is desperately needed to avert more child deaths.
The world had pretty much licked famine, until 2020. The last famine declared by the United Nations authorities was in a small part of South Sudan for a few months in 2017 - but now the U.N. warns that famine is looming in Yemen, South Sudan, Burkina Faso and northeastern Nigeria, with 16 other countries slightly behind in that trajectory toward catastrophe.
''Famines are now back,'' said Mark Lowcock, the United Nations humanitarian chief. ''It will be a horrible stain on humanity for decades to come if we become the generation to oversee the return of such a terrible scourge. This is still avoidable.''
We have been privileged to live a thrilling epoch in history in which child mortality has plunged, disease and famine retreated, literacy soared and human well-being skyrocketed.
At this time of the year I normally counter all my gloomy columns by writing that the previous year was the best in human history, by such metrics as the share of children dying by the age of 5. But 2020 was not the best year in human history. It was an annus horriblis, and UNICEF warns that the result may be 10,000 additional children dying each month from hunger.
The setback in developing countries has been exacerbated by passivity, paralysis and indifference in the United States and Europe, and international organizations like the World Bank.
The biggest cause of the global crisis is the coronavirus pandemic, but only indirectly. Outside the rich world, the casualties are not octogenarians with the virus so much as children dying of hunger because of economic disruptions, or middle-aged adults dying of AIDS because they can't get medicines.
The capital of human suffering today is arguably Yemen, which the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. As the world celebrates and moves on to the New Year, Yemini children like Abdo are dying of hunger.
Yemins suffering is complicated. Always poor, the country has been shattered by a war and a blockade by Saudi Arabia, with backing from the United States under both Obama and Trump administrations. [Obama officials have acknowledged not as candidly as they should, that this was a mistake.]
Misrule by the Houthi faction, backed by Iran, has compounded the suffering, as have both cholera and coronavirus - and donor countries are focused on their own problems and averting their eyes.
So student Abdo died.
The repercussions in the present real world are simply endless. The United Nations warns that poverty and disruptions from the pandemic may push 13 million additional girls into child marriages.
The World Bank says an additional 72 million children may be pushed into illiteracy. This is what The World Students Society has to face up to and plan to solve.
The Sadness of this post and publishing, continues. The World Students Society thanks author, Nicolas Kristof.
With respectful dedication to Mankind, the Leaders of the world, and the Global Founder Framers of The World Students Society. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on !WOW! : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :
''' God's !Help! '''
Good Night and God Bless
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