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Vol. XXVI No. 14 April 15-21, 2007 |
www.whatson-expat.com.ph |
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War Against Hunger
By Jacqueline L. Ong
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There is enough food to feed every man, woman and child on earth. Yet survey shows that millions still go hungry. As the Philippine government intensifies its efforts in addressing the hunger situation in the country, nongovernmental groups are also beefing up their efforts to contribute what they can.
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Destination: Capas, Tarlac |
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The Esplanade is a tree-and-flagpole lined mall at the Capas National Shrine in Tarlac. Each tree is meant to stand for one fallen hero from the Second World War. Every year, officials, veterans, and their descendants converge at these shrines to commemorate those who made the ultimate sacrifice. See story on page 2
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One out of every seven people on earth goes hungry. Every four seconds, someone somewhere in the world dies because of hunger. That means, everyday, 25,000 people starve to death; 18,000 of them are children.
Hunger is a global phenomenon affecting more than 850 million people the world over. And as these statistics reveal an imposing reality, the world is set to rise up to the challenge to feed its people.
Yet alongside these pronounced figures is the fact that the earth is actually capable of and is producing more than enough food for its populace, a blatant reminder that hunger is more than just a defeatable pandemic but a serious responsibility of its people.
“Most of the widespread hunger in a world of plenty results from grinding, deeply rooted poverty,” states CARE, a humanitarian organization on a mission to fight global poverty.
Here in the Philippines, the hunger situation couldn’t be more magnified. A recent survey showed that one in every five Filipino families—or 3.4 million households—had gone hungry at least once in the past three months. The 2007 first quarter data sourced from the poll conducted by the SWS Weather Station pegged the total hunger incidence at 19 percent, a similar figure as last quarter’s. There are, however, slight percentage point rises in the data of the National Capital Region (from 17.7 to 20.7 percent), Luzon (17.7 to 18.3) and Mindanao (22.3 to 22.7) whereas a dramatic dip in the Visayas’ (19 to 15.3). The survey involved 1,200 statistically representative household heads at a 3 percent margin of error. Putting a face to these statistics was the recent news which reached the headlines about a man taking hostage his partner and child out of desperation.
In response to this, the Philippine government intensifies its efforts by taking on an aggressive hunger plan through its Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Program (AHMP). President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo immediately challenged the different agencies of the AHMP to curb the hunger incidence in six months time. This, as she released an additional USD21 million fund that would beef up the ongoing programs headed by the National Nutrition Council.
The AHMP is anchored on one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals that seeks to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty in the world by 2015. AHMP is a 5-year local hunger program that is poised to cut by 90 percent the incidence of hunger every year or 900,000 families until 2011.
In an interview with What’s On & Expat, Executive Director Maria Bernardita Flores of the National Nutrition Council, the overseer of the implementation of the AHMP, explains that the government’s hunger mitigation framework revolves around measures that would address the supply and demand sides of the problem.
Page 6
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