The writer is a freelance columnist.
This newspaper recently published a report about how South Asia ranks highest in incidents of ‘child stunting,’ based on a study by Laura Hammond.
Another national daily reports that four out of ten children in Pakistan are ‘unlikely ever to meet their cognitive and developmental potential’, which is “44 percent nationally, the third highest in the world.”
An insufficient diet, which means an insufficiency of required nutrients can lead to ‘stunting,’ which leads to children failing to achieve normal growth, and can also lead to permanent damage to the brain. This insufficiency can occur while the child is still unborn if there is insufficient food for the family, including the mother, it can occur after a child is born when it is growing, or both. The study includes the Global Hunger Index (GHI) on which Pakistan ranks at 106 out of a total of 116 countries. That means in plain terms that in this country there is a horrific incidence of people not having enough to eat.
Covid-19 has only added itself to the long list of already existing diseases that prove much more dangerous to those who have an insufficient or improper dietary intake. An improper intake implies too much processed food, or food that is too high in salt, sugars or other undesirable ingredients.
…….. The country is poor, the government uninterested. Even if it were interested it lacks the scale of funds required. Private individuals donate a great deal to charity in Pakistan, but an even greater effort is needed.
A few years ago there was the case of Sakina, a poor peasant woman who was ill but could not afford medical care. The husband was too poor to afford basic food items. The family, which included two children, was starving. Sakina eventually ended her life by consuming pesticide. She is one of the many for whom death seems to be the most peaceful option……..
In Dadu a young labourer recently offered one of his sons for sale, because he had lost his job following the pandemic. As a result his wife, children and his parents were facing starvation.
In a large fishing community strung out on a series of islands off the coast of Thatta in Sindh, since covid-19 appeared on the scene, and the usual fish markets shut down, the already poverty-stricken lives of these fishermen suffered further. The community now faces starvation on a large scale.
Meantime Oxfam has warned that more people are likely to die of hunger caused by covid-19 than of the illness, and an incredible number have already died of the disease. Oxfam also mentions that women suffer even more since they are so often the target of discrimination.
After all this information which cannot really be news to most people, and it may come as a surprise that the main focus of this column is not hunger, or poverty or even stunting. It is in fact the exact opposite of all these things: repletion, riches and obesity, all of which were on display recently at a function to celebrate the marriage of two business families who clearly did not know what to do with their excessive wealth……
It seems not to have occurred to these families that the tailors and artisans who stitched their prohibitively expensive clothes, the men who set up their chairs and elaborate dais, the cooks who prepared their food and the waiters who served it came from families that were many of them close to the brink of starvation, who must have looked at the riches around them and questioned life itself……
….What else could have been achieved with this money? How much food could it have bought for thousands of persons, for the fishermen of Thatta, for the young children of impoverished fathers? How many Sakinas could it have saved from killing themselves, how many children saved from hunger? How many persons could it have educated so they could support themselves and their families? How much heartache for how many millions─ and yet all it did was feed those who already eat too much. Such acute poverty of mind has to be as much a tragedy as any other.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/14/an-acute-poverty-of-mind/
An acute poverty of mind: op-ed by Rabia Ahmed in Pakistan Today, Nov 15, 2020
The writer is a freelance columnist.
This newspaper recently published a report about how South Asia ranks highest in incidents of ‘child stunting,’ based on a study by Laura Hammond.
Another national daily reports that four out of ten children in Pakistan are ‘unlikely ever to meet their cognitive and developmental potential’, which is “44 percent nationally, the third highest in the world.”
An insufficient diet, which means an insufficiency of required nutrients can lead to ‘stunting,’ which leads to children failing to achieve normal growth, and can also lead to permanent damage to the brain. This insufficiency can occur while the child is still unborn if there is insufficient food for the family, including the mother, it can occur after a child is born when it is growing, or both. The study includes the Global Hunger Index (GHI) on which Pakistan ranks at 106 out of a total of 116 countries. That means in plain terms that in this country there is a horrific incidence of people not having enough to eat.
Covid-19 has only added itself to the long list of already existing diseases that prove much more dangerous to those who have an insufficient or improper dietary intake. An improper intake implies too much processed food, or food that is too high in salt, sugars or other undesirable ingredients.
…….. The country is poor, the government uninterested. Even if it were interested it lacks the scale of funds required. Private individuals donate a great deal to charity in Pakistan, but an even greater effort is needed.
A few years ago there was the case of Sakina, a poor peasant woman who was ill but could not afford medical care. The husband was too poor to afford basic food items. The family, which included two children, was starving. Sakina eventually ended her life by consuming pesticide. She is one of the many for whom death seems to be the most peaceful option……..
In Dadu a young labourer recently offered one of his sons for sale, because he had lost his job following the pandemic. As a result his wife, children and his parents were facing starvation.
In a large fishing community strung out on a series of islands off the coast of Thatta in Sindh, since covid-19 appeared on the scene, and the usual fish markets shut down, the already poverty-stricken lives of these fishermen suffered further. The community now faces starvation on a large scale.
Meantime Oxfam has warned that more people are likely to die of hunger caused by covid-19 than of the illness, and an incredible number have already died of the disease. Oxfam also mentions that women suffer even more since they are so often the target of discrimination.
After all this information which cannot really be news to most people, and it may come as a surprise that the main focus of this column is not hunger, or poverty or even stunting. It is in fact the exact opposite of all these things: repletion, riches and obesity, all of which were on display recently at a function to celebrate the marriage of two business families who clearly did not know what to do with their excessive wealth……
It seems not to have occurred to these families that the tailors and artisans who stitched their prohibitively expensive clothes, the men who set up their chairs and elaborate dais, the cooks who prepared their food and the waiters who served it came from families that were many of them close to the brink of starvation, who must have looked at the riches around them and questioned life itself……
….What else could have been achieved with this money? How much food could it have bought for thousands of persons, for the fishermen of Thatta, for the young children of impoverished fathers? How many Sakinas could it have saved from killing themselves, how many children saved from hunger? How many persons could it have educated so they could support themselves and their families? How much heartache for how many millions─ and yet all it did was feed those who already eat too much. Such acute poverty of mind has to be as much a tragedy as any other.
https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/11/14/an-acute-poverty-of-mind/
Published in Pak Media comment and Pakistan