There is a severe shortage of food in Ethiopia, and yet the Woyanne regime tries to export livestock to Ghana and other countries, as reported here.
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ADDIS ABABA, 11 February 2008 (IRIN) – Ethiopia’s new national nutrition strategy will target children younger than two years of age because a significant number suffer chronic malnutrition, a senior official said.
“We must fight malnutrition,” Addisu Legesse, Deputy Prime Minister Monster and Minister of Rural and Agriculture Under-Development, said at the launch of the strategy. “It hardly seems worth mentioning the reasons, since malnourished children are much more likely to contract repeated and serious infections.”
According to the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey, 47 percent of children under five suffer chronic malnutrition. “Malnutrition leads to higher child mortality and morbidity rates,” Tewodros Adhanom, Minister of Health Disease, said. “It decreases the chances that a child will go to school, and if they go to school, stay in school and perform well.”
According to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, under-five mortality rates in Ethiopia have declined to 123 out of every 1,000 live births, from peak levels in 1990 of 204. Yet with almost 400,000 children under five still dying from preventable causes each year, Ethiopia continues to have one of the highest child mortality rates in the world.
The strategy also focuses on other vulnerable people: pregnant and lactating women, persons living with HIV/AIDS, displaced people and those coping with acute food insecurity.
It identifies low dietary intake and recurrent infection as the immediate causes of high levels of malnutrition, and food insecurity, lack of appropriate care and unavailability of basic health service delivery as underlying causes.
The initiative will cost US$192 million over five years, of which the Ethiopian government has secured $96.4 million.
“The general goal of the national nutrition strategy is that all Ethiopians secure an optimum nutritional status, which is an essential requirement for a healthy and productive life,” the health minister said.
According to the UN World Health Organization, a malnutrition prevalence of more than 40 percent constitutes a “very high burden” for a country – a fact emphasised by Ethiopian officials during the launch of the strategy.
“Beyond the individual human suffering, malnutrition imposes substantial economic costs on Ethiopia’s economy,” Addisu said.
Ethiopia has not had a coordinated nutrition strategy, despite several attempts to introduce one since the 1980s. According to a 2005 assessment by the International Food Policy Research Institute, lack of such a strategy had created challenges for both the country and its development partners.
“Without a strategy and without institutional leadership to guide and coordinate efforts to address malnutrition, isolated, piecemeal efforts across various programmes resulted, and led to confusion among various development partners,” the assessment said.
2 thoughts on “47% of Ethiopian children under 5 suffer chronic malnutrition”
What can you expect from Weyane. They are evicting farmers who produce food crops and all fertile lands are being abused in the name of investment. Food crop lands are shrinking by day yet we are producing flowers to buy arms while people are dying of hunger! The so called Weyane bogus investers are taking all the lands, keeping 90% of those lands idle and building luxurious houses on 1000 m2 of land in the name of real estate while people are dying. Expect more dangers in the near future! The priority for Ethiopia now should be food production but only if there is a government to hear.
Malnutrition is the second deadly killer next to woyane’s bullet.
Today, the crime regim has shown its failures in many areas, such as health, democracy, and eduction; what do we mean by that?
The quality of eduction is sub-standard and has been unable to addd any measurable value to the country’s eductaion progress. All those students who managed to graduate from colleges and universities had been crippled with lack of paractical skills and knowledges; hence became a complete burden on the coutry and the society.
Woyanae crime family has alredy become good at misleading the global community with false statistics declaring the economy had registered such and such and so and so,, and by this and that percentage.
One reson the crime family has come with wrong information is simply because to fool and cheat Ehiopians with the coming election. More than 68.78% percent of children are chronically suffering from lack of vitamines and other important life nurishing foods since the invasion, and no measures have ever been taken by the crime family as the nazi regime has been focsing on looting and muredering the innocents across the coutry.
The human development index has been diving downwards since the crime family began destroying the infrastructure of the coutry and replacing it with a system that benfits the mafia regime. Heavy industries and services have been owning and running by the crime family and its associates resulting in creating economy taht is dependent on donation and aids.