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An incredible
24,000 people die from hunger each and every day.
More than
840,000,000 people suffer from hunger. That's about three times the
population of the USA. No, this isn't some new famine that just
occurred. This is chronic, persistent hunger, which kills 24,000
people every day, or over 8 million each year. Three of four who
die are younger than five.
In fact, famine
accounts for less than 10% of these deaths. The other 90% are in
situations where people live their entire lives without enough food
to eat all of the time. They often go hungry not only physically,
but due to other factors in their communities are often
undernourished mentally.
Starting to wonder
why famines are featured news stories, while there's never anything
about chronic hunger? Especially since famines represent such a
small part of these deaths? It's because famines are not part of
everyday life. When a plane crashes and kills 240 people, it's on
the news for days. But because 100 times that many deaths occur
from chronic hunger every single day, it's not anything
special.
What's even worse is
that there really is enough food produced globally to feed everyone
on the planet. In many countries, distribution of the food is also
working just fine. Sometimes, the problem lies at the simple fact
that people don't earn enough money to buy food because they lack
the education or skills necessary to get a good job.
The number of people
that die of hunger each day has decreased 58% from 41,000 in 1977
to 24,000 in 1997. The solutions to hunger exist and are being
implemented even as we speak. There is no reason for this senseless
death to continue any longer. We need your help to put this to an
end, once and for all.
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