This is the fourth post in a series considering the root causes of hunger. The Millennium Development Goals serve as a helpful framework.

Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5: Reduce Child Mortality; Improve Maternal Health

Hunger, maternal health, and child mortality form a vicious cycle. Bread for the World’s Frontline Issues in Nutrition Assistance: Hunger Report 2006 (Chapter 3, pg. 77) offers an illustration: A hungry woman is malnourished and lacks good health care. She hasn’t had enough to eat for a long time and is underweight. Now she becomes pregnant. Lacking sufficient food for herself, let alone a baby, she does not gain enough weight or take in enough nutrients for a healthy pregnancy. Between the demands of a growing fetus, insufficient health care, and hunger, her health is further strained. In a state of such physical weakness, her risk of dying during childbirth increases. If she survives, breastfeeding and caring for a baby will make further demands of her body and energy, requiring more food than usual – food that she still doesn’t have.

In the meantime, her baby, lacking adequate nutrition in the womb, is born weighing less than he should. He has a tough start to life. His immune system is weak, so he’s likely to get sick and may not make it to his fifth birthday. If he survives, his physical and mental development may be slowed or even impaired without adequate amounts of milk and food. Without adequately nutrition, as he grows into adolescence and adulthood, he is smaller, weaker, more susceptible to illness, and less productive than he would have been otherwise. This makes it more difficult to maintain employment and secure enough to eat. It is difficult to break out of the cycle of poverty. In the case of a baby girl, the cycle repeats itself with each pregnancy. Sadly, poor maternal health is both a cause and effect of hunger.

On the hopeful side, it is a cycle, which means it can be interrupted. Or even transformed. Appropriate food intake can turn the process from a viscious cycle into a virtuous one. With enough to eat, women are stronger, more able to meet the requirement of pregnancy, and more able to secure food and resources for themselves and their children. Their babies are born healthier, stonger, and more resistant to illness. With properly fueled development, these children grow into fully productive adults, increasing their capacity to maintain employment and feed their own families. Providing food can reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and eventually, reduce hunger.

-Nancy Michaelis

Elena (seated) with Stephanie (Amextra staff)

One of the people we met in Lomas de San Isidro was a woman named Elena. Through a translator, she explained to us that during the spring swine flu outbreak, she and a group of women hand-sewed 5000 face masks in the space of a few days. Then they went door to door through the community handing them out, and providing information about the flu and how to prevent it. Collectively, it required hundreds of hours of work for which she and the other women received no pay. But in Lomas, no one got sick with the flu.

When asked why she did it, Elena said she wanted to help her neighbors. And she understood that success takes teamwork, and she wanted to be a model of how to do that. She wanted to encourage others to work for the community, too. She said the women’s strategy is to work together, even though it is not always easy, and some have to be convinced that it’s worth their time. But Elena believes that, together, they can improve life for everyone.

We visited Lomas because it is a community supported by Amextra, one of ELCA World Hunger’s long-standing partner organizations. It was ELCA World Hunger funds that provided the materials for the masks that Elena and her neighbors sewed, and that support the Amextra-sponsored community center where classes on health and disease prevention are taught. It was gratifying to see a first-hand example of the impact my donations are having, the good ways the money is being used, and to recognize my part in that greater whole.

But for me, far more profound was the example being set by Elena and the others we met. Relative to those living in Lomas, I am rich beyond imagination. I have lots of comforts and plenty to eat. But unlike Elena, I can’t tell you the names of the people who live three houses away from me. I’d like to say I’d stay up all night to make them face masks, but if the flu hits my neighborhood, I’m not so sure I’ll see those nameless, unknown people as my priority. Elena and the residents of Lomas de San Isidro have very little money, but they have a wealth of human connection and support that many of us Americans, for all our money, can’t buy and desperately want. In the community that the residents of Lomas de San Isidro have created, I saw God. And I felt hope.

There are lots of places in the world like Lomas de San Isidro (including here in the U.S.!), where people struggle daily to eat. To acquire needed healthcare services. To obtain information. To offer their children a hopeful future. And there are lots of places where people accomplish amazing things in the face of adversity every day. Our trip to Mexico gave a small group of us a renewed sense of hope and urgency in the fight to end hunger. May we find ways to sustain that sense of urgency and pass it on to others!

-Nancy Michaelis

Last Autumn I had the opportunity to study for a semester in Sweden. Looking to fill some requirements for my International Studies major back home I signed up for the course Global Health. At the time, it slipped my mind that Sweden is known for this kind of study and research. As I sat amongst students from Sweden, Poland, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia who were studying subjects which ranged from nursing to psychology, I realized that I was in for an eye-opening semester. As you read, please keep in mind that all of the facts are already a year old, but their significance is no less impactful. This blog is a very short snippet of all that I learned in that class; below are the concepts and figures that moved and surprised me the most.

Excerpts from my final paper:

• “I was also struck by a statement which one of the presenters recalled from one of the older Zambian women, ‘When the white men came we saw that we were poor.’ I believe that we have as much to learn from struggling peoples as they have to learn from us, they are rich in other aspects of life.”

• “I also found it fascinating when Mr. Almroth talked about how children need love, and when their parents die they are more likely to get sick as well. It’s amazing how something so simple can have such deep and compounding impact. It’s hard to realize how much that love is taken for granted in developed countries where health is expected and sickness can be treated.”

• “Additionally, the knowledge that female literacy is most directly connected to child mortality, and that fifty percent of all child deaths could be prevented through female literacy surprised me.”

• “Education empowers women, gives children more access to healthcare, encourages micro-loan systems, informs about water sanitation and improves infant survival through breast feeding.”

• “I was finally incredibly relieved to hear Mr. Almroth talk about the fear of over-population. I admit that I was one of those people who are often conflicted by compassion for people in need and scientific numbers of over-population. Hearing that increased child survival has always lead to less pregnancy was all I needed to hear for my fears to be quickly relieved and my compassion to take over!”

• “I was encouraged to think about AIDS as a result of poverty, not necessarily a lack of knowledge. This cuts at the basic human need to survive, and when people see no way to make money, they turn to dangerous practices to survive. When it is knowledge vs. necessity, necessity always wins.”

• “Standing at twice the African regional average, 150 out of 100,000 people in Zambia are infected with tuberculosis. Of those infected, over half are co-infected with HIV/AIDS. Zambia is currently working to improve lab facilities, increase community awareness, expand public-private partnerships (such as support groups who visit patients,) increase printed and circulated materials and conduct training of health workers.”

• “One very cool way of disease education that Zambia has implemented is grounded in schools. Each year on World AIDS Day and World Malaria Day formal debates are held between students in schools to increase awareness of the disease crises.”

• “Every year 7.5 million women and babies die unnecessarily due to pregnancy-related causes, NOT disease. This is 50% more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined! In poor nations around the world poverty causes death in heart-wrenching ways because the cure is both known and attainable. On one side of the problem lies a lack of funding for pregnancy care and neonatal mortality prevention and the shift of educated doctors from rural Africa to lucrative Europe. On the other side of the problem lies hope. The greatest resource that Africa needs to improve the maternal health situation is educated midwives. Additionally, the country of Mozambique is leading the way by training ‘non-physician clinicians’ to perform cesarean sections, obstetric hysterectomies, laparotomies and other life-saving emergency obstetric care. These clinicians also exist in rural Malawi and Tanzania, creating an incredible resource where doctoral care is limited or non-existent…Cures and preventative methods are known, available and common; proper funding, education and trained professionals are what the world is waiting for.”

Thanks to lecturers Almroth, Berggren, Halling and Bergström.

In 2008 American’s spent $40 billion on bottled water. One-fourth of which was simply repackaged tap water. Why do we spend so much money on water that we could just as easily get from our own faucet?

The documentary FLOW: How did a handful of corporations steal our water? takes viewers through a journey that ultimately asks the question, “Is access to drinkable water a basic human right?” From the riots of water privatization in Bolivia to low-cost-clean-water supporting jobs in rural India this film looks at the question from multiple sides, but with one major theme: justice. Justice for those who can’t pay, who walk long distances to water sources, who drink from dirty rivers, who are having their aquifers pumped out from underneath them.

Most of us have heard about the detrimental effects that water bottle waste has on the environment. From polluted oceans to filling up landfills at your local dump. What I didn’t know was how just pumping that water has even more direct effects, because according to the Pacific Institute, it takes three liters of water to produce one liter of bottled water. It enlightened me to the true realities of pumping such vast quantities of water out of our ground’s resources.

My reaction to the documentary was intrigue and surprise. I knew that water was a huge issue, that bottled water posed environmental problems and that privatization had caused major riots in other parts of the world – but what I didn’t know was how it all flowed together.

This film is opinionated, hard-hitting, and at times hard to imagine. What would you do if your local river was literally bloody? Can you imagine being thrilled at having 10 liters of clean water per day? Do we realize that preventing disease is as easy as drinking clean water? It may seem like water issues belong to developing countries, to areas with poor sanitation or a desert climate, but in fact they are experienced in our own American backyard, in States as far apart as California and Michigan.

Get ready to be energized and learn the little things you can do to keep water from becoming a privilege, to keep rivers flowing and to prevent disease around the world.

Prepare to never look at a bottle of water the same way again.

Post by Lana Lile
FLOW trailer
Plastic in the Ocean

I got new lenses in my eyeglasses last week. I had been noticing that distant signs weren’t quite as sharp as they used to be, so I wasn’t surprised that at my annual eye exam, the doctor said my prescription had changed. It wasn’t a big difference, but enough to warrant new lenses. I’ve been through many such adjustments since junior high, when I began wearing glasses.

As I drove away with my newly improved vision, I was thinking about how amazing it is that someone figured out such a simple way to make vision possible. Without my glasses, I can see clearly only about a foot or two away. Beyond that, things get blurry. But by putting some glass in front of my eyes, voila! Such a significant problem so easily fixed. Things snap into perfect focus and I can see the individual leaves on the tree across the street. And the lettering on street signs. And, back in junior high, the chalk board at the front of the room.

At which point it occurred to me: I don’t know how I would have made it through school without glasses. Indeed, so important is vision to school that our kindergartners are required to have an eye exam as part of their enrollment in public school.

If education is a critical component in combating poverty, so too is optometry. I’m fortunate on several counts. First, I live in a country with plenty of eye doctors, and I grew up in a family that had the means to take me to see one. I also was part of an education system that had plenty of books. Being nearsighted, even without glasses I still could have read anything up close. Without glasses, school would have been harder and I surely would not have done as well. But as long as I had access to books, I could have gotten the information I couldn’t see on the board.

But what of children in places that lack both optometrists and text books? Or children who simply lack access to those things? Or children who are farsighted and can’t see their books? I don’t know the percentage of children who need vision correction, but I’m guessing it’s not insignificant. I’ve seen plenty of pictures of children in one-room schools around the world, with or without text books, often without desks or even chairs, looking at a teacher and a board at the front of the room. But how many of the children in those pictures were wearing glasses? One more obstacle I’ve never really considered.

As a nation, we love coal. Over 50% of our electricity comes from coal, and it’s a natural resource that we have lots of. It’s an abundant energy source right here in our own country. Each time we flip the light switch, turn on the TV, or warm up dinner in our microwaves, we should be grateful for coal.

But it’s not all happiness and lights. The trouble starts from the very beginning, when you have to get the coal out of the ground. Traditionally, we have engaged in underground coal mining and strip mining. But more recently, we’ve moved to mountaintop removal mining. The name is just as it implies. The top of the mountain – up to about 400 feet of it – is blown off, exposing the seams of coal, which are then extracted and hauled away. The benefit of this method is that it’s cheap. And theoretically, cheaper extraction means cheaper power for us consumers. Compared to digging deeply into the mountain, structurally supporting the tunnels, sending people in to dig out the coal, and then hauling it out of the mountain, it’s pretty easy to blow off the top of the mountain. It also takes many fewer people to accomplish, which is not only cheaper, but puts fewer lives at risk.

But what a toll it takes! The video clip below shows the scope of it – sort of. I filmed it from an intact mountain (hence the trees in the foreground) overlooking an area that has been mined and is no longer active. Note how far there are no trees, and how much lower the ground is in the mined areas. And this mine actually goes quite a bit farther to the right than the video shows. It was sobering to see.

On the flip side, the nation’s demand for electricity continues to grow. As long as we keep asking for power, companies will seek ways to supply it. And we aren’t exactly docile if our lights don’t turn on when we want them to. What’s more, coal is one of two major industries in West Virginia. Mining provides much needed jobs (though not as many as it used to), and a tax base that supports education, hospitals, and infrastructure. We met State Senator John Unger, who explained that without coal mining, there would be a serious shortage of tax funding for necessary services. As a result, the legislature and government give mining companies the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, we heard the ambivalence of citizens, who live with the trade-offs between employment and environment every day. Senator Unger commented that it often feels as though it’s a choice between economic justice and environmental justice. What impossible choices to make.

-Nancy Michaelis

One of my ongoing frustrations in trying to be a better consumer is that it’s pretty much impossible to judge what the best choice is without spending hours of research on every little purchase. I’ve blogged about this before. Try this: pick up something around you right now. Anything. What is it made out of? Where did the component parts come from? What inputs went into manufacturing it? Does it contain any chemicals? How were the people who made the item treated? What is required to maintain the item, and what are the impacts of that maintenance? The questions are endless and unanswerable, and apply to nearly everything. So we do the best we can with the information we have and hope for the best. Or we quit trying and just buy whatever we want.

Enter Good Guide! Imagine my delight when I read on their web site,

“GoodGuide strives to provide the world’s largest and most reliable source of
information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and
companies. GoodGuide’s mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green
products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC
Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent
“For-Benefit” company. We are committed to providing the information you need to
make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and
power in the marketplace.”

It’s a new organization. Apparently they’re aggregating all of this data and summing it up into product ratings. They seem to be working hard to ensure their data sources and evaluating teams are credible, and they’re considering not just health, or environmental, or social impacts, but all of them. Exactly what I need! My own extensive research is not practical, but looking stuff up on a web site is. This one has a long way to go; there are lots of products in the world in need of ratings. But it’s a start, and I’m sure glad to see it.