Here are some statistics about poverty and health as documented (and taken as it is) from the UN Millennium Project website (www.unmillenniumproject.org)

• More than one billion people in the world live on less than one dollar a day. In total, 2.7 billion struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day.
• Every year eleven million children die-most under the age of five and more than six million from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.
• Around the world, a total of 114 million children do not get even a basic education and 584 million women are illiterate.
• Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
• More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea.
• Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus.
• Every 30 seconds an African child dies of malaria-more than one million child deaths a year.
• Each year, approximately 300 to 500 million people are infected with malaria. Approximately three million people die as a result.
• TB is the leading AIDS-related killer and in some parts of Africa, 75 percent of people with HIV also have TB.
• More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day…300 million are children. Of these 300 million children, only eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.
• Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5.
• More than 2.6 billion people-over 40 per cent of the world’s population-do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.
• Four out of every ten people in the world don’t have access even to a simple latrine.
• Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.
• More than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-today basis.
• More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education.
• A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy. This compares with a 1 in 3,700 risk for a woman from North America.
• Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day-an estimated 529,000 each year-from pregnancy-related causes.
• Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendant.

By the time you finished reading the above facts, maybe ten people would have died somewhere in the world due to hunger related reasons!!!

The thought that we need to do something about such conditions led to the birth of the One Campaign. The campaign, which is part of the “Make Poverty History” movement, has its roots in US and is intended to bring together people from various facets of life to support the call of removing extreme poverty, promoting fair trade, canceling the debts of poor countries in the African continent, providing access to improved health support etc. The campaign now has the support of two million people from around the globe. In the context of the G8 meet in the coming weeks, it is time for us to voice our support to this movement.

One can know more about the campaign, the issues, the supporters etc from the website www.one.org, which also has a link, where we can sign up a declaration.

www.one.org

Ajith Sankar R N