Hunger and the Holocaust

Are we ever really hungry?  In the Western world we eat for enjoyment, therapy, love, social gatherings, and the list goes on.  Some fitness experts tell us we should eat 6 light meals a day to ward of hunger pains; consequently, never feeling the pains of hunger.  The idea of eating 6 meals a day doesn’t even fit into the schema in the under-developed, under- resourced world.  My children are funny.  It never fails, we’ll be eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner and nearly every time over the course of that particular meal they will ask, what are we eating at our next meal.  Eating has become a hobby, past-time, luxury, an expected event multiple times a day.  If only the whole world knew and experienced the abundance of food options the way we do.

GPC has recognized some of the hunger issues of the world.   Our people have given generously and are intending to help fight against the global hunger needs.  We are particularly focusing our attention on the severe malnutrition in Mali, West Africa.  We are in partnership with SILAH-Mali (NGO humanitarian organization in Mali) and MANA a manufacture of “Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Foods” (RUTF) to help alleviate the growing malnutrition needs of a nation where 38% of Malian children are chronically malnourished.  One of our SILAH Mali reps who sees the malnutrition daily, wrote me an email detailing an account of increased malnutrition and it’s affects that are comparable to the holocaust  and the hunger suffering that was endured during World War II.

Read the account below and visualize the tragedy of the holocaust and the modern day tragedy of hunger today.

In B-village (name not disclosed for security reasons), I saw a young boy of about 6-7 years of age walking around with one side of his head completely wrapped up.  I asked what happened, and the men near me said he had a sickness—it had started with a sore in his mouth, and that it had gotten worse.  I had them call the boy to me, and they made the boy unwrap his head.  What I saw was beyond description.  One whole side of the boys face and jaw—bone and muscle from cheekbone down—were horribly mangled, deformed, or non-existent.  It was so bad that when he closed his eye, the bottom half of his eyeball was still exposed to the air.  The boy wouldn’t look at me, and I realized he was ashamed because he knew how awful his face looked, and I was almost physically moved with compassion for him.  I kneeled to his eye level, and took him by the shoulders looking him full in the face.  He wouldn’t return my gaze until I had told him to look at me multiple times.  I then told this boy that he had nothing to be ashamed of—that shame was reserved for those willfully violating God’s law.  I told him I thought he was a respectable boy—a bonya tigi.

His condition was such that I didn’t know if he could get care in Mali.  My colleagues and I agreed to pursue what we could to help him—to perhaps save his sight, and restore some dignity.  My colleague took the boy (named Baba) to the private hospital here in Bamako.  The surgeon took one look at the boy, and told us that the illness was called “noma”, and there was a hospital that would treat the boy for free.  Indeed, the hospital exists, and through the benevolence of European doctors, the boy is going to get treated—including multiple reconstructive surgeries.  I almost cried when I found this out.

In researching Noma, I discovered it is a form of gangrene, that is related to malnourishment and poor hygiene.  It is not an uncommon bacteria, but I read that it usually only becomes symptomatic in severely malnourished children.  It is a disease of poverty.  This disease was prevalent in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, and today is most prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Intervention with products such as RUTF’s can help prevent this disease. This disease kills over 90% of children infected—and the rest are horribly mangled.  And once again, one of the leading factors in the prevalence of the disease—Malnutrition.  A critical element is nutritional intervention, along with antibiotics.