Starved for Attention: Some of the 195 Million Stories of Malnutrition

September 30, 2010
Starved for Attention: Some of the 195 Million Stories of Malnutrition

In June, MSF and VII Photo Agency launched “Starved for Attention,” a multimedia campaign that exposes the neglected and largely invisible crisis of childhood malnutrition. “Starved for Attention” aims to rewrite the story of malnutrition through a series of multimedia documentaries that seamlessly blend photography and video from some of the most accomplished and award-winning photojournalists working today.

VII photojournalists Marcus Bleasdale, Jessica Dimmock, Ron Haviv, Antonin Kratochvil, Franco Pagetti, Stephanie Sinclair, and John Stanmeyer traveled to malnutrition “hotspots” around the world to shed light on the underlying causes of the malnutrition crisis and innovative approaches to combat this condition. They captured frontline stories from Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, India, Mexico, and the United States.

An estimated 195 million children suffer from the effects of childhood malnutrition; 90 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Malnutrition contributes to at least one-third of the eight million annual deaths among children under five years of age.

Many families simply cannot afford to provide nutritious food—particularly animal source foods such as milk, meat, and eggs—their young children need to grow and thrive. Instead, they struggle to survive on a diet of little more than cereal porridges of maize or rice, amounting to the equivalent of bread and water.

You can be part of the campaign to rewrite the story of malnutrition by going to http://www.starvedforattention.org and signing the petition demanding that donor governments ensure that food aid fulfills sufficient nutritional requirements and that the 195 million malnourished children around the world get what they need to escape the deadly cycle of malnutrition.

The “Starved for Attention” campaign has been made possible with the support of LG INFINIA.

Go to StarvedForAttention.org to see all seven multimedia presentations.