PEACE AND FOOD

Again sleepless nights for many because of warfare and terrorism, but if we want to redress death and injury we’d better look at diseases. Oh, yeah, they are not in the news like bomber planes and terrorist attacks, but diseases can reach us easier and more lethally than warfare and lawlessness. Much easier.

About 60 million people die every year out of whom less than 5 million through violence, road traffic, suicide and the like. This makes diseases accounting for nearly 90% of all deaths in the world, each year.

Of course, we have to consider old age as a natural contributor to diseases. One way to bring in aging is by comparing countries. Worldwide, the average life expectancy at birth is about 70 years but average Africans do not live longer than 50 years and many others also do not reach 70.

The early arrival of their death comes from diseases, among adults, but even more so among children. They are vulnerable for diseases mostly because of malnutrition, and a lack of proper food is especially fatal for children. About nearly 7 million children under the age of five die each year.

But here and there is the mistaken belief that poverty cannot be alleviated while we can stop warfare by demonstrations, media attention and perhaps even by voting. Meanwhile, the reality is that both poverty and warfare are ongoingly produced by the established power structure. Therefore, the reduction of both poverty and warfare requires modifications in the established power structure.

To pursue such modifications, we may understand that we sometimes get too easily carried away by emotions and that governments, corporations and media feed on that tendency. In order to redress this tendency in us, we can reinforce our capacities to collect numbers and see proportions, so that we rank our priorities independently and sensibly. In the course of time, this power undermines the societal establishment that produces poverty and warfare.