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By Peter S. Goodman, Abdi Latif Dahir and Karan Deep Singh
Long before the pandemic reached its village in the rugged southeastern part of Afghanistan, Halima Bibi was aware of the concern of hunger; it was an omnipresent force, a source of relentless anxiety as he struggled to feed his four children.
Her husband earned about $5 a day, taking products to the wheelbarrow of a local market to the surrounding houses. Most of the time, I brought home a bread bar, potatoes and beans for dinner.
But when the coronavirus arrived in March, took the lives of her neighbors and wiped out the market, her husband’s source of income was reduced to about $1 per day. Most nights I only brought bread to the house.
“We hear our young men scream hungry, but there’s nothing we can do,” Bibi said, speaking in Pashtun on the phone from a hospital in the capital, Kabul, where her 6-year-old daughter is being treated for severe malnutrition. it is not only our situation, but the truth for the maximum of the families in which we live. “
This is the truth for many millions of people around the world. As the world economy absorbs the maximum painful decline in fortune since the Great Depression, hunger is on the rise. According to the United Nations World Food Programme, others are potentially facing the deadly degrees of the so-called lack of food confidence in the global future are expected to double this year to 265 million.
Worldwide, the number of children under the age of five trapped in a state of what is known as wasting (their weight is so low overall that they are at highest risk of death, as well as long-term progression and fitness disorders) is likely to be increasing through nearly seven million this year , or 14%, according to a recent article published in The LancetArray, a medical journal.
The largest number of vulnerable communities are concentrated in South Asia and Africa, in countries that already face problems, from armed conflict and excessive poverty to climate-related afflictions such as droughts, floods and soil erosion.
At least for now, the tragedy unfolding is far from a famine, which is regularly triggered by a mixture of war and ecological catastrophe. The virus disrupts shipping links and currency values decrease, increasing the costs of imported items.
By contrast, while the world economy is expected to contract by nearly 5% this year, families are drastically cutting their spending. Among those who have entered the pandemic in excessive poverty, millions of others are experiencing an intense crisis. how to meet their fundamental food needs.
The pandemic has reinforced basic economic inequalities, which are no more decisive than food.
In South Africa, more than a quarter of a century has passed since the official end of apartheid, yet most blacks remain confined to poor communes away from jobs and cities. When the pandemic erupted in March, the government ordered the closure of casual food stores and suburban shops, which led the army to detain merchants who violated orders. This has forced locals to rely on supermarkets, suddenly more than ever, given the closure of an already depressing bus service.
At the same time, South Africa closed its schools and got rid of school food, the only confident meal for millions of academics, just as family winners wasted their means of getting to work. By the end of April, almost part of the entire south African families had exhausted their budget to buy food, according to a university study, but social unrest eventually led to a loosening of the country’s restrictions.
Far from being a limited danger to the world’s poorest countries, hunger is a scourge in development even in the richest countries. Workers who have never felt compelled to ask for help now line up at food banks in the United States, Spain and Britain. other people reduce their purchases of new vegetables and vegetables, while relying more on reasonable calories from fast food.
In richer countries, economic pressures are cushioned through government systems such as unemployment benefits, subsidized wage plans, and monetary subsidies for food. In poorer countries, coronavirus intensifies a litany of already harsh afflictions.
“Covid was another surprise in what has been a terrible year in this region,” said Michael Dunford, Regional Director for East Africa of the World Food Programme. “In addition to having 21 million more people already in the lack of acute food confidence at the beginning of the year, then we had floods, locusts and now we have Covid, so it’s surprise after surprise, which only increases the vulnerability of the region.
As the need for assistance intensifies, the risk of the virus is forcing aid agencies to abandon public fitness campaigns and restrict their reach. Blockades imposed to end the pandemic will deprive 250 million young people in countries deficient in vitamin A supplements scheduled this year, increasing the risk of premature death, according to UNICEF. It complements the immune system, restricting vulnerability to diseases that opportunistically exploit malnutrition.
The virus has also forced the delay of other vaccination programmes, which are related to doses of dewoers, another bulwark that opposes malnutrition.
“I am involved in the socio-economic effects of the pandemic on the nutritional scene of children,” said Victor Aguayo, UNICEF’s New York Director of Nutrition Programmes. appropriate measures and programmes have not been implemented. “
In Juba, the capital of South Sudan, the pandemic only the recent maximum form of serious danger.
A sense of crisis has prevailed since the climax of violence four years ago in a long-running civil war fueled by ethnic division. In the midst of the fighting, others fled the surrounding camp to take refuge in internal camps in the city. , many have become dependent on food distributed through aid agencies and everything they can buy on the market.
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