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Committee: UNICEF Topic A: Child Malnutrition.
Director: Felix Mario Reojas Valdes Moderator: Melissa Maria López Moeller
History of UNICEF After the World War II, the European children face starvation and diseases. But to end these problems in December 1946 the United Nations children’s fund (UNICEF) was created by the United Nations to helped children and their problems; their goal was to provide food, clothing, and health care for the children. Then in 1959 the UN General Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which defines children’s right to protection, education, health care, shelter, and good nutrition. After that in 1961 the UNICEF decided that children also needed to have a good education, so in that year they started to help with support to teacher training and classroom equipment in newly independent countries. UNICEF nowadays still has the goal to help build a world where the rights of every child can be realized. This committee believes that development and caring for the children is the base of human progress. UNICEF was created with the purpose in mind to work with others to defeat the obstacles that poverty, violence, disease, and discrimination place in a child’s path. They promote measures to give children a better start in their lives, because proper care at the youngest age forms a strongest base for a person’s future. UNICEF has certain areas to help the children such as: Child survival and development, Basic education and gender equality, HIV/AIDS and children, Child protection, and policy advocacy and partnerships.
Topic Background
Have you ever felt hungry, just because you haven’t have a drink or eaten something in the past five hours? Have you ever used the expression “I’m going to die for hungry” literately? Malnutrition is the general term of an indecent diet or nutrition; it’s when people don’t eat the necessary food supplies for the body to perform the metabolic processes essential for proper functioning. Nowadays people in develop countries believe that malnutrition is eating to much or not eating at all for 2 weeks just to be able to wear that amazing pair of Prada jeans. Before going to undeveloped countries, we need to see the streets and neighborhoods of the developed countries, here we find people who are actually dying from hunger, while two or three blocks away a kid is throwing away his vegetables. Now this is the type of malnutrition, but we are talking about small percent of the population in these countries. When you compare this number to undeveloped country’s this seems as an ant in a garden. Almost the 30% of the world’s population suffers some form of malnutrition, causing many people to don’t have enough energy, or essential nutrients for a healthy and active life. This causes an increase in diseases and mortality in the children, which besides affecting the health, eventually creates severe global problems. The most affected in this problem are the children and the third age generation. The children malnutrition not only affects children develop; unfortunately is a health problem which is increasing. Here is a chart of how the hunger in people has been increasing in the past years:
Africa had been always the country were children died because of malnutrition; children are the most affected ones because of the lack of food and nutrients. In the past years about 150 millions of children were affected by famine and starvation. Since some of the countries in Africa are poor, they don’t have enough money to buy medicines to cure the diseases, so that’s why too many children day every year of hunger. But not only had these problems happened in undeveloped and poor countries, this malnutrition problem is also happening in developed countries such as United States of America. USA is one the country with the most obesity in the world; more than the half of the population in America suffer of obesity, and the majority of that half of population dies every year because is they don’t eat to much they are eating fast food; but when they are eating a lot, they don’t eat the right nutrients or the right food for their body.
HOW DANGEROUS IS MALNUTRITION?
In the majority of the diseases, nutrition plays an important roll because it helps to have a better treatment and an excellent recovery, making the patient have a better quality of life. Here are some of the diseases that we can get, if we have a bad nutrition.
-CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE: This disease is caused by the interruption of the blood flow to the heart, and the heart to the body. To prevent this problem is recommendable to increase the eating of fruits and vegetables, to eat less food with fat, and the best protection is to make exercise activities and have a great training to prevent these diseases and have a better life.
-DIABETES MELLITUS: This disease is caused by the excess of glucose in our body; the glucose is mostly produce by the sugar in the carbohydrates. To maintain this disease stable the patients need to have a healthy and strictly diet; they need to eat food in high fiber, fruits and vegetables, and to eliminate all kind of sugared aliments.
-Bulimia and Anorexia: This disease is commonly in developed countries and the nowadays the teenagers are the most affected ones. The mainly cause of Bulimia and Anorexia is that the teenagers feel they are too fat, and that they need to be skinny as soon as possible; so they started to eliminate all kind of food from their lives and their stomachs. Even though they are TOO SKINNY they feel that they are still fat, so they need to get skinnier, but the true is that they DON´T NEED IT. To prevent this, teenagers need to know that having a diet is okay, but they need to have a healthy diet and go to specialist; they need to eat lots of nutrients and vitamins, like fruits and vegetables, and that making exercise is also a good way to get the unnecessary fat.
WOW! AMAZING FACTS ABOUT MALNUTRITION….
-Every year 15 million children die of hunger -One in twelve people worldwide is malnourished, including 160 million children under the age of 5. -The infant mortality rate is closely linked to inadequate nutrition among pregnant women. -One out of every eight children under the age of twelve in the U.S. goes to bed hungry every night. -Half of all children under five years of age in South Asia and one third of those in sub-Saharan Africa are malnourished.- -Malnutrition is implicated in more than half of all child deaths Worldwide -About 183 million children weigh less than they should for their age -Every 3.6 seconds someone dies of hunger -It is estimated that some 800 million people in the world suffer from hunger and malnutrition, about 100 times as many as those who actually die from it each year.
WHAT ABOUT THE COUNTRIES? 150 million children in developing countries are still malnourished, the most affected part in the world is South Asia with 78 million, Sub-Saharan Africa 32, East Asia Pacific 27, Middle East/North Africa 7, Latin America 4 and CEE/CIS with only 2.
India: This country like we all know is located in South Asia; every second child under three in the country is malnourished. The number for under five children is 55 million which is two and half times the population of Australia.35% of the world's malnourished children live in India.
China: Is one of the biggest countries in the world, and the more overpopulated, the statistics for China and the situation is almost as bad as Sub-Saharan Africa, which is one of the most affected in this problem.
Mexico: The statistics of child malnutrition in the country is being decreased, we can mention that know at day it have 15.5% when 1 decade ago it have 4.09% more.
United States: Almost 14 million children are suffering from hunger in this country; government is trying to make children that can afford it to eat, and also helping families who don’t have money to buy food.
Ghana: As a result, a recent study has shown that 45% of children under the age of 5 in the Ho region are underweight for their height. The Health Outreach and Peer Education Center (H.O.P.E) is one of the most important campaigns now in the country.
SOME SOLUTIONS We think this is a problem that will be done with a lot of time and work for part of almost all countries in the world, some solutions that we propose are: the improvement of the government to help families without any resources, start campaigns all over the world to recollect money and food, that governments spend a % of they’re budget to make an account where money will be deposed and later make works, where people will get money to his family.
QUESTIONS YOU MAY ASK!
-What is the percentage of your country? -What are the main causes of the problem? -What are the main consequences your country is dealing with? -Is your country doing something to stop it? What? -What are some of your solutions? -Is your country helping other countries? -Is your country supporting civilian help or only governmental?
BIBLIOGRAPHY http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malnutrition http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/subjindx/113hung.htm http://kidshealth.org/parent/nutrition_fit/nutrition/hunger.html http://adam.about.com/encyclopedia/infectiousdiseases/Malnutrition.htm http://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_history.html
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Year |
1990 |
1995 |
2005 |
2007 |
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Hunger victims(million) |
842 |
832 |
848 |
923 |