"At Maradi, infants, some near death, and their mothers await aid provided by Doctors Without Borders. Some experts blame primitive farming and health care for the high death rate among children." Michael Kamber/Polaris, for The New York Times
"At sunset Wednesday, in an unmarked grave in a cemetery rimmed by millet fields, the men of this mud-walled village buried Baby Boy Saminou, the latest casualty of the hunger ravaging 3.6 million farmers and herders in this destitute nation.
"After Baby Boy Saminou, 16 months old, died of malnutrition at Maradi, a hospital worker lifted his body from the back of Mariama, his mother. At 16 months, he was little bigger than some newborns, with the matchstick limbs and skeletal ribs of the severely malnourished. He had died three hours earlier in the intensive care unit of a field hospital run by Doctors Without Borders, where 30 others like him still lie with their mothers on metal cots.
"One in five is dying - the result, many say, of a belated response by the outside world to a disaster predicted in detail nine months ago."
This is a terrible story, in the original sense of the word; it should strike terror! It also relates to a fundamental flaw of this blog. Knowledge and understanding are not enough. Indeed, knowing a disaster is in the making, and understanding its magnitude and how it can be prevented are no good at all, unless people actually act to prevent and mitigate that disaster!
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