The pangs of hunger in your own back yard

Hunger is a global problem with a recent UN report noting that 815 million of the world’s population - 11 percent - go to bed hungry each night. Even more lack the kind of food needed for good health. Closer to home, while Asia has the most hungry people, it is sub-Saharan Africa where the issue is the most pressing. Here, one quarter of people do not have access to adequate food.

Our province is all too familiar with the pangs of hunger. In 2014, international aid agency Oxfam reported that a third of people in the Eastern Cape lacked food. Stats SA research subsequently confirmed this alarming statistic.

Hunger is not only a problem for the present day. It has terrible consequences for the future. Children deprived of adequate nutrition either die young or grow up stunted, both physically and mentally.

On Wednesdayl we reported social development MEC Dr Pumza Dyantyi has warned hunger is on the rise in the Eastern Cape where, despite state grants, even working people are battling to buy food.

She said to cope with the spiraling cost of food, many households were cutting the size of their meals or skipping meals entirely.

Others are buying food that is past the sell-by date and begging meals from family and friends.

The areas identified as lying at the heart of provincial hunger are to be found in all our backyards.

These are areas such as Port St Johns, Mandileni, Cathcart, King William’s Town, Ngcobo, Cofimvaba and Nompumelelo in the heart of East London.

The provincial government is working to combat hunger and the MEC’s department is to be commended for its sterling efforts to ensure its nutrition centres feed some 2.5 million people.

Even more important are efforts to encourage local communities to grow their own food gardens.

This provides people with the means not only to feed themselves but to eat healthily.

The rising rate of unemployment coupled with the high cost of living means such efforts at local cultivation might become a question of life and death for our most needy citizens.

Children deprived of adequate nutrition die young or grow up stunted, physically and mentally