21,000 Children

Some 21,000 children die every day around the world.

That is equivalent to:

• 1 child dying every 4 seconds
• 14 children dying every minute
• A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day
• A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days
• A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days
• An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days
• Just under 7.6 million children dying every year
• Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010

The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage. From www.globalissues.org

In Africa:

MORE than 20 million people in Africa are at risk of famine. The wildlife is also effected.

Threat to life … a Masai man passes a zebra carcass in Kenya, which is in a region where hundreds of people have died from hunger and thirst recently.
Photo: Reuters