No Child Born to Die - Save the Children campaign to end world hunger

Save the Children is campaigning to end world hunger. You can get involved through the No Child Born to Die campaign.

In a world with enough food for everyone, malnutrition causes over a third of deaths of children under five. Children are left weakened and they can’t fight off illnesses like diarrhoea or pneumonia.

Progress on combating malnutrition has been pitifully slow. Every hour, 300 children die because they don’t get enough of the right food – that’s one child every 12 seconds. We need to break the chains of hunger that hold back millions of children.

There is an urgent need for action on malnutrition. Increasing food shortages across Africa, from Senegal in the West to Somalia in the East, threaten the lives of thousands of children. Chronic malnutrition severely damages children’s resilience in the face of acute shocks, which means they are even more likely to die.

The G8 Summit

With a worsening hunger crisis across Africa, the world’s most powerful leaders must act when they meet at the G8 Summit on 18-19 May 2012. The G8 leaders can break the chains of hunger for millions of children and start to revolutionise the way we deal with hunger by agreeing to:

• A food security initiative that focuses on nutrition: agriculture should produce more food and more nutritious food
• Increased funding for proven solutions to malnutrition, such as vitamin fortified foods, just like cereals are in the UK
• Global targets to reduce the effects of malnutrition. Targets will focus efforts to beat hunger.

The Chain Letter

Save the Children is calling on David Cameron to seize this chance to save children’s lives. You can sign their chain letter to David Cameron.

Meet Your MP

Save the Children are supporting campaigners to meet their MP and ask them to use their influence to push nutrition up the Government’s agenda. They would be delighted if you, as health experts, would join them and their local activists to make the case for action on nutrition. For more information, email Rowan: r.harvey@savethechildren.org.uk