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Hunger, Malnutrition, And Famine

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According to recent statistics from the United Nations World Food Program, 795 million people across the globe, suffer from the effects of being undernourished ("Food Program," 2015, para. 1). Both hunger and malnutrition serve to be the number one risk to health and well-being, more so than Aids, Tuberculosis, and Malaria combined ("Food Program," 2015, para. 1). Although the planet produces enough food to feed everyone (Wright & Boorse, 2014), hunger, malnutrition, and famine continue to adversely affect people in both developed and developing nations. Children are particularly susceptible to the ill effects of hunger and malnutrition as stunting or growth failure, aside for disease, is the leading cause of abnormal growth development in children ("Stunting," n.d.).
In July of 2015, while serving as a health care provider, at a two-day medical clinic in the impoverished town of Suscal, Ecuador, a fairly young woman sought my treatment for her 12-year-old son who was suffering the consequences of chronic diarrhea from a parasitic infection contracted by drinking contaminated water. Besides chronic diarrhea, the child also suffered the after effects of the Hepatitis B virus, which was contracted by eating contaminated food. Most stunning was the child’s clinical presentation of being underdeveloped and underweight for a normal 12-year-old. Even more alarming was the fact that the child was missing both maxillary incisors. Through an interpreter, the mother inquired as

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