The two worst evils in the world? "Nuclear Bombs and Starving Children" - And Carl Laughed.

Click on the "Feeding Africa" and "Feeding Africa- Multimedia" in the articles section to read the rest of Eric Hand's articles and see his and Dawn Major's trip to Africa this summer.



Hunger leaves children susceptible to disease
By Eric Hand
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Monday, Dec. 11 2006

BLANTYRE, MALAWI —

The mothers know that bed No. 1 is very bad for their sons and daughters.

In the malnutrition ward of Malawi's Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the bed next to the nurses' station gets the most attention and the sickest children. In a hospital where one out of every three children die, it is a bed with a high
turnover rate.

A visiting English doctor considers moving Gladys Mponda to bed No. 1. She sits limply in her mother's lap and stares, her bulging eyes set deep in a puffy face. The doctor runs through her problems: AIDS, a urinary tract infection, an X-ray showing a shadowy patch on her right lung that could be tuberculosis.

These maladies could kill her. But the root cause of her decline, the reason Gladys came here, is a far more simple and pressing problem: She hadn't eaten enough.

As diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria get global attention and money, some doctors say that donors are overlooking the biggest children's health issue of all: malnutrition, a creeping, insidious disease that rarely captures headlines. Worldwide, 6 million children — more than twice the population of metro St. Louis — die every year because of immune systems weakened by malnutrition, according to the United Nations.

"It dwarfs AIDS," says Washington University pediatrician Mark Manary, who has worked in Africa throughout his career. "Fundamentally, the amount of food (in Africa) is not enough."

Manary is working with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in Creve Coeur, which is trying to genetically engineer an important African crop, cassava, so that it resists a pandemic virus that has cut yields in half. Scientists also want to fortify the potato-like plant with vitamins and minerals. The Danforth Center, a nonprofit biotech center that gives its technology away, has been unable to test its cassava in African soil.

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