The Associated Press ran a heart wrenching feature about how Covid-19 has catastrophically dismantled any minimal and basic standard of living in Hounde, Burkina Faso. Yes, we had to Google it also. It's in Western Africa. Their annual and big time harvest comes with little food as a result on any given year but due to the pandemic, hunger has rocketed to extraordinary levels. This photo (below) is not a child with already structured features forming, this is one month old Haboue. The markets are closed due to Covid-19 restrictions so as a result, her family sold less vegetables and her mother's too malnourished to feed Haboue. This is what poverty looks like. Did you put down that burger yet?
The pandemic has strangled already starving communities and villages around the world. In Western Africa, 10,000 more children are dying per month. This staggering figure is only accentuated by more than half a million children (per month) suffering 'wasting' - malnutrition that distends stomachs and causes spindly limbs from lack of calcium. 2019's 'wasting' was at 47 million. 2020, due to the pandemic, is already up another 6.7 percent. One in five children in Burkina Faso have chronic undernourishment and since food prices have rocketed based on the lack of supply yet sheer demand, over 50 percent of the country are left starving.
While reading this, did it put you off opening that bag of chips?
With 2020 in a bleak state, next year will be worse in the region since the chain reaction of people unable to work due to zero (yes zero) energy, deaths and less people planting crops, means 2021 results in less farming, which obviously produces less food. And the cycle continues. More than 128,000 children will die within the next 12 months as a result of the virus and its affects on the local society. By the way, what are you having for dinner? Thai or pizza?
The World Food Program stated that global famine from Covid-19 is hitting 'biblical proportions' and 30 percent of the population will suffer from wasting. Not only do these families lack the sheer energy to get to the nearest hospital for help, but with social-distancing restrictions, the rules are in place that the afflicted must not spread the virus so are discouraged from coming near first responders.
Afghanistan has hit a red zone alert on hunger with malnutrition spiking by 13 percent this year alone. Food prices have risen by 15 percent and four in every 10 Afghan children are stunted from lack of food. Yemen is on the brink of famine, the Sudanese now live off one meal to the next, a 65 percent increase from 2019, and basic goods prices have tripled, no thanks to inflation reaching 136 percent. People in Darfur are resorting to eating grass, weeds and plants. The 'lean season' is generally when crops are growing and not ready to sell. So far, 2020 has been one entire and continuous lean season.
Are you getting ice-cream to enjoy after your Thai or pizza? Possibly the $7.99 a pint gourmet brand? How does it feel when you touch your extended stomach, full to the brim with rigatoni? Maybe envision how it'd feel if that was an extended, distorted stomach that hasn't seen food in three days.
Please do the right thing - cut the amount of your food spending in half, starting today, and donate the rest of your food spend to UNICEF. Because lacking energy from eating a big meal is absolutely nothing like lacking energy because your bones are breaking due to three bowls of millet porridge (water mixed with grains)...a week.
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