Re: Amazing, although people are starving in India and Africa and require food aid, what is important is the export of food from India and Africa to Europe. Surely, charity begins at home -- but not in Africa and India, it seems...
...and neither in Argentina:
BMJ 2002 ( 30 November )
Malnutrition spreads in Argentina, once the "breadbasket" of the world
Sophie Arie
San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
As economically damaged Argentina frantically negotiates for foreign aid, reports have emerged that malnourished children are dying in the country’s poverty stricken northern provinces.
Ten chronically malnourished children have reportedly died in the northern province of Tucumán in recent weeks, and officials say 49 have died in Misiones province, on the border with Brazil.
The deaths are the tip of an iceberg, nutrition experts warn. Malnutrition now affects over two million Argentine children, according to the Buenos Aires Centre for Studies on Infant Nutrition.
Argentina, which in the early 1990s was among the world’s 10 richest countries, is floundering through its worst economic crisis in history after defaulting on a massive $141bn (£90bn; €142bn) public debt and devaluing the peso in January. But it remains a leading agricultural exporter and produces eight times enough food to feed its population of 36 million.
The country is not facing famine but is chronically unable to distribute its own natural wealth. While half the population struggles on less than $2 a day, and almost a quarter of the workforce is unemployed, the dramatic devaluation of the peso has pushed up prices of everything from the country’s famous beef to bread and milk by over 30%.
Large numbers of poor people now scrounge through rubbish heaps for food in the country’s major cities, and many people depend on government handouts of 150 pesos (£27; $43; €43) a month. The cash strapped government is struggling to keep up a £35m monthly social aid programme, with no fresh aid from the International Monetary Fund since last December’s default.
The fund has urged Argentina to make drastic cuts in public spending to get back on track with its foreign creditors. But Argentina argues that the fund is making unreasonable demands of a country in its fifth year of recession. Argentine officials have seized on recent hints of economic revival as signs that Argentina can survive its crisis without outside help.
Tucumán is a small but naturally fertile province, with a moist microclimate in which sugar plantations and lemon groves flourish. Many of its poorest people live in fly infested shacks tucked between the lemon groves. Corruption seems to divert social aid funds from the most needy people, and one government official admitted, "the accumulated money that is sent here for them disappears along the way." Local newspaper reports said some women had been forced to prostitute themselves to officials to obtain the monthly government handout.
Critics say that some of Argentina’s poor people have become dependent on government handouts and do not even look for work. However, most of the families of Tucumán’s dead children had not received any social support this year. Julio Miranda, the province’s governor, now faces allegations of failing to distribute social aid funds correctly.
For several generations malnutrition has affected the poorest citizens across the north of Argentina and in its sprawling slums. Children are being born underweight, and the number of registered deaths at birth in Tucumán rose to 769 in 2001, double the number through the 1990s.
"Women are asking for contraceptives even more than food," said local government maternity expert Dr Evelina Chapman. "We need at least 15 000 intrauterine devices just to stop people giving birth."
bmj.bmjjournals.com
As we say in French, Les cordonniers sont toujours les plus mal chaussés... Shoemakers are always the worst shod.
billingtonwines.com
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