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Children miss school to help parents pay for food -survey

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:20 GMT

Source: alertnet // Emma Batha

Children wear slippers as they stand on snow at Medea village, 80km southwest of Algiers, February 14, 2012. REUTERS/Ramzi Boudina

By Emma Batha

LONDON (AlertNet) - Sky-high food prices are forcing children in many countries to drop out of school and go to work in order to help their struggling parents put a basic meal on the table, Save the Children says.

The aid agency is calling for the biggest push in history to tackle malnutrition – a “silent killer” which is an underlying cause of more than a third of all child deaths and leaves many millions physically and mentally impaired for life.

A third of parents interviewed for a survey commissioned by the charity complained their children didn’t have enough to eat and one in six said their children were missing class so they could work. In Nigeria, nearly a third said they had pulled their children out of school to help with earning money for food.

The survey was conducted in December and January, following a record year for food prices in 2011. Researchers interviewed people in five countries – Bangladesh, India, Nigeria, Pakistan and Peru – which are home to half the world’s 170 million malnourished children under the age of five.

Global food prices hit a peak in February 2011. Although prices declined in the latter part of the year, the 2011 annual food price index was up 24 percent on 2010.

Save the Children is urging British Prime Minister David Cameron to hold a global hunger summit when world leaders come to London in August for the 2012 Olympics.

“In the past year, nearly a quarter of a billion parents in countries already struggling with malnutrition have cut back on food for their families – this shows the urgent need for greater action,” Save the Children Chief Executive Justin Forsyth said.   

"Every hour of every day, 300 children die because of malnutrition, often simply because they don’t have access to the basic, nutritious foods that we take for granted in rich countries.”

HUNGER ERODING GLOBAL ECONOMY

In a new report, “A Life Free From Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition,” Save the Children says malnutrition is slowly eroding the foundations of the global economy by destroying the potential of millions of children.

The aid agency outlines a package of basic measures, including breastfeeding, and fortifying foods with vitamins and minerals, which it says would save the lives of 2 million children a year and prevent over 60 million others being blighted by malnutrition.

Long-term malnutrition prevents children’s bodies and brains from developing properly. A chronically malnourished child can have an IQ of up to 15 points less than it would if well nourished.

Save the Children pointed out that although malnutrition is an underlying cause of 2.6 million child deaths a year, it is not recorded on death certificates, which means it is not effectively addressed.

The charity contrasted the “pitifully slow” progress in reducing malnutrition to the high-profile campaigning and investment that has gone into tackling other causes of child mortality like HIV/AIDS or malaria.

The report says many of the proposed solutions will pay for themselves both by making people more productive, thereby boosting the economy, and by lowering the cost of healthcare as properly nourished children are less prone to disease and illness.

(Editing by Rebekah Curtis)