There are 170 million children aged under five whose development has been stunted by malnutrition because of lack of food for them and their breastfeeding mothers, and the situation is getting significantly worse, according to research by the charity Save the Children.
In Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Peru and Nigeria - countries which are the home of half of the world's stunted children - recent rises in global food prices are forcing the parents of malnourished children to cut back on food and pull children out of school to work.
According to the report, 'A Life Free from Hunger: Tackling Child Malnutrition,' a third of parents surveyed said their children routinely complain they do not have enough to eat. One in six parents can never afford to buy meat, milk or vegetables. It suggests that six out of 10 children in Afghanistan are not getting enough nutrients to avoid stunted growth.
"If no concerted action is taken," warns Justin Forsyth, the charity's chief executive, "half a billion children will be physically and mentally stunted over the next 15 years".
Over the past five years the price of food has soared across the globe, thanks to extreme weather conditions, diverting farmland to grow biofuels, speculative trading of food commodities and the global financial crisis. The poor, who spend the bulk of their income on food, are hit hardest.
One in four parents in the countries surveyed have been forced to cut back on food for their families. One in six have had children skip school to help their parents at work.
In India, half of all children are stunted from malnutrition with a quarter often going without food entirely. In Afghanistan, the price of food has risen 25 per cent - the average rise worldwide in 2011. In places like Kenya it is up 40 per cent.
Save the Children describes malnutrition as a silent killer because it is often not recorded as a cause of death on birth certificates, leading to a lack of action across the developing world.
With early intervention, the life-long physical and mental stunting from hunger can be eased, enabling individuals to reach their potential.
In northern Afghanistan, Mohammed Jan was only half the weight he should have been at seven months because his mother was so poor that she did not have enough food to produce breast milk. He was slipping into death, but he was spotted by a voluntary community health worker and sent to Khulm District Hospital near Mazar-e-Sharif.
The majority of children experiencing malnutrition in countries such as India, Nigeria and Bangladesh are not as lucky, according to the report.
Malnutrition is the underlying cause of a third of all child deaths, the report says, but it never receives the high-profile campaigning and investment accorded to other causes of child mortality such as malaria, measles or Aids. Aid focused on those has produced results. Child deaths from malaria have been slashed by a third since 2000, yet child malnutrition in Africa has fallen by less than 0.3 per cent each year over the same time frame.
Save the Children said that, without greater focus on the condition, individuals such as Mohammed Jan were facing a blighted future. "More than 30,000 children already die every year in Afghanistan because of malnutrition, and a severe drought in the north has left thousands more dangerously hungry," said Mr Forsyth, who has just returned from the country.
Most malnourished children, around 85 per cent, do not die but are diminished, physically and mentally. The World Bank estimates that stunting reduces the GDP of developing countries by between 2 and 3 per cent. Children with stunted growth can have an IQ 15 points lower than a well-fed child's.
"Obviously that has a knock-on impact on their education and the development potential of the nation," said Mr Forsyth. The last decade has seen massive improvements in the health of children in the developing world. Unnecessary child deaths have fallen from 12 million a year to 7.6 million. The world food crisis is now threatening to stall that progress.
Save the Children is pressing David Cameron to call a world hunger summit when world leaders will be in London at the Olympics. "We want the biggest push ever on world hunger," said Mr Forsyth. Save the Children estimates that, for $10bn focused on a package of basic interventions, two million lives a year would be saved and 60 million more saved from stunting.
Hunger in numbers
- 450million Children will be affected by stunting in the next 15 years, if current trends continue.
- 1 in 3 Malnutrition is an underlying cause of the deaths of 2.6 million children.
- 300 Children die every hour of every day because of malnutrition.
... and reassess.
This data can be used by different groups in different ways.
The covertly hostile who are helping to create this situation will use it as more evidence that extreme population control measures are necessary. Privately, these measures are agreed to include the deliberate creation of disease epidemics, further starvation, and war.
What this group is really trying to do is to enturbulate the population to such an extent that we will forsake our visions of freedom and submit to their "rule." This "rule" will primarily consist of them blaming us for everything bad that happens.
The concerned but unimaginative general public will be thinking in terms of expanding relief efforts. Though less and less funds are available for charity work, I am sure some attempts will be made, probably with moderate success.
Then there are the people who have a better grip on what is really going on. In broad terms, this group separates into those who have enough knowledge and resources to act, and those who are still trying to obtain that level of knowledge and resources.
This game is very much in our court right now. We need to create a vision that will solve the problem by eliciting huge popular support, and at the same time cut off the covertly hostile from pulling the public back under their wing by some new pretense.
It is the opinion of many, and I tend to agree, that whatever is done, the public will have to be "tricked" into supporting it by turning it into some sort of game that they can relate to.
Most people are not the least interested in being saints or martyrs. Neither do they see themselves as political activists or even community leaders. These are roles that a few will be attracted into as they learn more truth.
For most, their support will (for now) be in the form of them going to a website by following a link they receive on Facebook or Twitter or by email, and clicking a button. Those of us who are a bit more committed to handling the situation will have to be willing to do all the rest, whatever that is.
The key revolves around somehow changing a pivotal perception: That "the poor" simply exist, and become victims of these events. The truth is that "the poor" have been created, on a continuous basis, for thousands of years, by stealing their wealth from them using, usually, force of arms.
If societies existed that seemed non-materialistic compared to Western standards, it was probably because they preferred it that way, and not because they were "primitive." That said, I do understand that, after having your wealth stolen from you repeatedly over generations, you might lose interest in creating a lot more of it. But I believe that is the weaker dynamic.
Thus, there is a moral mandate and an ethical necessity for the perpetrators of these crimes to "come clean." But, what do you know? Many of us will find ourselves complicit in this operation! Just because we have become aware of this, however, does not mean it is a good idea to try to hammer this revelation home to the general public.
But, perhaps we could find some way to encourage one and all to take a small step in the direction of taking more responsibility for their actions.
When I was a kid there was a show on TV called "Queen for a Day." Three or four "contestants" competed by trying to tell the biggest sob story. The one that got the most applause won the biggest prize.
What if we had something like "honest for a day" where you could get prizes for telling the truth?
You see the delicacy involved in trying to reverse this dwindling spiral? How do we cut through the crap and change people's minds about some of their most basic assumptions about how life works?
Unless we can find a way, I am quite sure that the covertly hostile of the world will continue to rape this planet, thus allowing them to always have someone or something else to blame for why they are the way they are.