Aid Too Late for Niger's 'Forgotten' Children

[sintax]

Aid too late for Niger's 'forgotten' children

By Kim Sengupta in Baoudeta, Niger

Published: 08 August 2005


She looks like a tiny baby with fair hair, clinging on to her mother as she is weighed on a little cradle, her tears suddenly turning into a smile.

But Zaina Habab is dying. Her golden curls are signs of acute malnutrition. Her weight of eight pounds and five ounces would be right for an eight-month-old, not for her, a girl of three-and-a-half years. Her mother, Sahei, who has already lost three children, shakes her head. "I do not know how much longer I will have her."

Eight months after the United Nations launched its first appeal, warning of famine in Niger, three months after assistant secretary general Jan Egeland called it the "the number one forgotten and neglected emergency in the world" graves are being dug every day. The warning of another senior UN official, Jan Ziggler, that "the children, the sick, the elderly are on the brink of being wiped out", is coming true.

<snip>

Vadur Issafou lies motionless, flies crawling over his shut eyes, as if death had already come to claim him. The four-year-old boy does not want to move and has to be dragged to his feet. Vadur is suffering from a severe yellow fever. Will he live? "If he is very lucky; we can only hope," said a nurse.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article304414.ece

We see this as 'News'- "It's such a crying shame what is happening in Africa". Rarely do we connect it to the evils of conspicuous consumption in the West; of our never ending desire for techno-gadgetry. Those minerals do come from somewhere, places where people once lived and farmed.

[Booster]

1. This story just breaks my heart. No one should die of starvation

ever. I urge everyone to donate a little something to help these people - they don't deserve this. I donated to Doctors Without Borders, but there's other agencies that are helping also. Please.

[AliceWonderland]

2. It's shameful how Africa is simply forgotten

And it's even more tragic that the situation is so often regarded as "doomed" when there are causes and effects at work:

There are other factors blamed for the rapidity with which the problem descended into crisis. The International Monetary Fund and the European Union imposed economic conditions on the former French colony which, critics say, pushed up the price of food and allowed the Niger government to explore a disastrous "free market" programme to tackle a famine.

[Gregorian]

3. The leaders of the world are criminally negligent.

I cry for these babies.
I think this is the biggest story. How could we let this continue? And it was totally avoidable. Damn those who had the means and did nothing.
We care more for dogs, here.

[sintax]

4. kick

[fujiyama]

5. THis is shameful

The world is allowing people to starve in the TWENTY FUCKIN FIRST CENTURY!

This is completely unecessary.