I caught a story about Plumpy’nut on *60 Minutes * last night. I was amazed…such a cheap, simple food, but it saves children’s lives, pulling many of them back from the brink of starvation.
Doctors Without Borders is a good bunch, huh? I did have sort of a GD question…I’m glad children’s lives are being saved, but considering where they live, how will their prospects be any better? We’re talking about a country with 70% illiteracy, the main food is millet, which we use in the US as bird feed, and in the UN ranking of industrialized nations, it’s dead last. The country can’t support itself now. Will increasing the population help the country, or just be a drain on resources?
I caught the tale end of the 60 minute speil. Unfortunately, I think it’s a catch 22 situation…Give Plump’nut to save the life of the child, only to have the child grow up in a country that is unable to provide the opportunities for food, education, health care, etc.
No, but you’ve got to take 'em one at a time, starting with the worst, and finding some relief to infant mortality, whether that due to starvation or the lack of resistance it induces, is as good a place as imaginable.
Get there, especially with a solution so readily available and that can be reproduced en masse, and then you can divert those relief agency funds not used for more expensive processes to the next stage, clean water and crops. Then on to education. Then job creation, etc.
I loved the look of hope on the Doctor from DwoB’s face. It was one of hope, of genuine promise, on a face that knew it far too rarely.
Those babies just broke my heart…babies are supposed to be fat little things. Not only were these babies scrawny…you could tell from their eyes that they were not well. No sparkle.
Doctors Without Borders is on my win-the-lottery, give-em-a-metric-buttload-of-money list. If these guys ain’t goin’ to Heaven, you and me got no chance.