Compassion Health Facts: Food, Water and Disease

The United States
Most of us don't think much about getting food. We always have more than enough. In fact, many of us are on diets to try to eat less! But hunger is a problem in America. "Food insecurity" is a fairly new standard used to measure the stability of one's access to food — and it applies to too many people in the United States. 

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that 36.3 million Americans were food insecure in 2003, up from 31 million in 1999. More than 13 million of this number were children.
• Of these children, 420,000 experienced food insecurity with hunger.

Water is another resource that most of us don't think about either. We can turn on our faucets and drink to our heart's content. But think about this:

• Scientists estimate that each year up to 7 million Americans become sick from contaminated tap water. 
• Contaminants can be found in every body of water in the world, including our tap water. The Environmental Protection Agency has found more than 700 pollutants in U.S. drinking water.

Cavities don't seem like a big deal to most people. When we have toothaches, we just go to the dentist. But the next time you go to the dentist to get that cavity filled, think about this:

• Dental decay remains one of the most common infectious diseases among U.S. children. Among low-income children, almost 50 percent of tooth decay remains untreated and can cause pain, dysfunction and problems with weight. 
• Impoverished children are twice as likely to suffer from dental decay and dental disease.
• Dental disease among children causes 51 million hours of missed school every year. 
• Tooth decay is the most common chronic childhood disease in the United States, now five times more common than asthma.
  

Worldwide
Getting the proper caloric intake per day, including vital fats to promote healthy brain development, is essential for the world's children. But many do not get enough to eat:

• 852 million people across the world are hungry. Of this number, 815 million people in the developing world are also undernourished, consistently taking in less than the minimum amount of calories essential for sound health and growth.

One of the greatest needs in the developing world is for sound sanitation and clean water:

• A total of 2.6 billion people — 50 percent of the developing world's population — do not have access to basic sanitation facilities.
• Four hundred million school children suffer diminished learning abilities due to intestinal worm infections from lack of sanitation and clean drinking water.
• In our world, 1.1 billion people worldwide still do not have access to improved water sources.
• More than 3.4 million people each year, most of which are children under age 5, are killed by waterborne diseases caused by lack of access to clean water.

One in seven children in developing countries do not have access to any kind of health care, much less a dentist who can fill their cavities.

• A lack of access to standard immunizations still threatens children. Two million children still die from diseases that could have been prevented with routine vaccines that cost U.S.$1 each. 
• An unconscionable number of these children — 10.6 million each year — die or are crippled from easily preventable illnesses and diseases, including measles, diarrhea, tetanus, and diphtheria.
  

Sources: 2001 World Christian Trends, William Carey Library, Dave Barrett and Todd Johnson; Food Assistance and Nutrition Report, Number FANRR42 (Washington, D.C.: Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2004), Retrieved from the Internet; Health: Why are millions of women and children dying?; National Resource Defense Council, "Clean Water and Oceans: Drinking Water"; Nord, M., Andrews, M., and Carlson, S., Household Food Security in the United States, 2003; State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; State of the World's Children 2005, UNICEF; The UNICEF WES Index; The U.S. Department of Agriculture, based on a national U.S. Census Bureau survey of households representative of the U.S. Population in 2000; Population Reference Bureau.