News and Politics | August 18, 2008 | 7 comments

Ethiopia's new famine: 'A ticking time bomb'

source: http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=62324

Image
agitator
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY KONSO, Ethiopia - Once, the farmers walked for hours to bring their sorghum and maize here to market. These days they trod the same paths, parched grass crunching under foot, to carry their starving children to a feeding clinic.

Like crops, the children are weighed (in a nylon harness seat attached to a scale) and measured (with a tape to record arm circumference). The most severely malnourished are kept overnight for up to a month; the rest go home with a week's supply of Plumpy'nut, a nutritional paste
  1. groups:
    News and Politics
  2. tags:
    News and Politics,  Ethiopia,  Food Crisis,  Famine
  3.     
    |

7 comments // Ethiopia's new famine: 'A ticking time bomb'

  • teddy14
  • AliciaJC
    • 0
      AliciaJC  

    • its a sad story, but it didn't really address the social factors that keep encouraging ethiopians to have children even though they cant afford to feed them. Thats what im most interested in.

    • 3 years ago
  • TopScruffy
    • 0
      TopScruffy  

    • If the U.S. consumed half as much meat there would be no people starving anywhere. We would be able to use the land to grow crops that could provide for Ethiopia and everywhere else suffering from food shortages.

    • 3 years ago
  • demeter_sf
    • 0
      demeter_sf  

    • I am curious - why aren't people calling this a human rights violation? Isn't the most fundamental human right the right to food and shelter?

      I think we live in a society where those two needs are taken care of (for most people), so human rights only apply to the right to free speech, religion, etc. In my opinion, the most fundamental of all human rights are simply the right to live.

    • 3 years ago
  • ChrisWT
  • rebelution07
  • bmltv
more from News and Politics:
from the community

top videos