More than one in four children in the developing world are malnourished. China is working hard to reach the goal set by the U.N. to reduce child poverty by 2015.
More than one in four children in the developing world are malnourished, UNICEF said, a decline of just five percentage points since 1990 (New York Times, 06).
The Micah Challenge, issued by a group of religious affiliates and supported by the U.N., urged Government officials worldwide to diminish the percentage of children living in poverty by one-half by the year 2015. China has surpassed this goal already as they have halved the percentage of underweight children in China and reduced the rate of death among children under 5 by more than one-third. This is unbelievable progress, but assuredly, will encourage other developing countries to press on.
Health experts and medical professionals estimate more than half of the 11 million deaths of children under five years-old, each year, can be attributed to malnutrition.
Both India, and South Africa, two of the worlds most devastated nations, in terms of child poverty, have made little to no progress in cutting their numbers. I was in Cape Town, South Africa this January and witnessed the malnutrition with my own eyes and touched it's frailty with my own two hands. Children five years old appear to be only one or two years old because of their extreme malnutrition and health issues. As we all know, poverty yields itself to violence, death, hatred and brutality.
I was visiting a school one day and met a ten year-old little girl. Her face radiated the sun and her pigtails bounced with each step of joy that she brought to others' lives. After talking with her for a brief moment, her teacher approached me saying, "She saw her mother get shot in the face last night".
Poverty...
