Famine Flashcards
Describing or defining famine
Using crude mortality ratios (CMR: Rubin 2014)
1 attributable death/ 10,000/ d = famine
5 attributable death/ 10,000/ d = severe famine
15 attributable death/ 10,000/ d = extreme famine
Using a multi-layered diagnostic tool - IPC (this will be discussed in the seminar)
Causes of famine
- Famines can be man-made or natural but are ALWAYS social phenomena
-> Natural disasters occur relatively frequently but do not always result in famine
-> Natural famines are often connected to climatic change or natural disaster - flood, drought, cyclones etc. - Oversimplified and crude
-However, it is almost impossible for natural famines to exist outside of man-made famines. FAMINE, by it’s very nature, is a social phenomenon and the impact of famine will always depend upon how a society is organised.
- In natural famines - the ‘natural’ phenomenon is usually only one event amongst others such as war, social or political unrest, livelihood disturbance etc.
The ‘Food Availability Decline’ thesis:
will there be enough food everyone? This theory relies on natural disaster being the cause of unequivocal famine. Economically speaking:
food availability = total production + imports - exports
Tackling famine
requires that livelihoods are created and protected - usually through public action.
The ‘Entitlement Approach’
Pioneered by Amartya Sen (1981), Nobel Laureate (economics)
It identifies Endowments and Entitlements which give access to livelihoods and food
Endowments
- Owned assets or personal capacities
- Can establish entitlements, which in turn give command over food
- owned land, labour power, produce that can be sold are all endowments.
Entitlements
- Relationships established by trade, production or sale of labour power
- Direct: food is gained through production (reliant on endowments - land, seeds, tools)
- Exchange: selling one’s own labour power to buy food (reliant on endowments - labour power)
- Trade: selling produce to buy food (which is reliant on endowments - produce - which requires e.g. land, tools, seed, labour power)
Social context of famine
what can be done to help?
Sen’s pioneering economic approach to famine & starvation underpins the modern paradigm
Democracy & free-press are widely acknowledged preventers of famine
->Initially highlighted by Sen
Haan et al. describe these as:
“…critical institutions for establishing a social contract for famine prevention between citizens and the state.” (2012, p77)
“Famine is a catastrophic disruption of the social, economic, and institutional systems that provide for food production, distribution, and consumption. Contemporary famines stem less from crop failure than from the political and financial failures of governments to prevent famine and respond effectively” (Cohen 2017, p657)
Nutritional consequences of famine
Truswell (2012)
- Children stop growing
- Children and adults lose weight
- Starvation causes people to suffer:
hypothermia
weakness
hunger
loss of subcutaneous fat
muscle wastage
↓ pulse
↓ BP
abdominal distension
diarrhoea
infection - pneumonia, TB, typhus
Wasting
(Filteau & Akik 2017)
- Held to indicate recent energy insufficiency (due to poor nutrition and/ or infection)
->Contrary to stunting
->Prone to oversimplification (this terminology is generally deemed confusing)
->Recent severe wasting SAM; ‘clinical wasting’ or ‘baggy pants’
~10% = African children
~14.5% = S. Asian children
~1.2% = European children
WastingUnderstanding Growth Charts
This is a weight for age growth chart for use from birth.
Infants are measured preferably at monthly intervals – especially early on in life.
This chart is a unisex chart which shows the 3rd centile for girls and the median for boys.
The 3rd centile marks the point at which weight is considered healthy for only around 3% of individuals. The median is the 50th centile – the point at which weight is considered healthy for around 50% of individuals.
Growth charts are an easy and useful way of monitoring undernourished children. They can clearly show catch-up growth and growth failure.
In the developing world, however, ageing a child can be much more difficult than it seems. With large families, no central birth register and often no calendars, parents rarely know the exact age of a child.
It is useful to create a local events calendar which may help when ageing children. A local events calendar consists of the exact dates of recent news worthy events in the local area. E.g. newpapers may record the dates of earthquakes, droughts, heatwaves, crop failures, building of new wells etc. You can then ask the parent, was the child born soon after the earthquake last year? etc. and try to age the child from that.
WastingUsing Growth Charts
The first chart shows a child whose growth has faultered around 6 moths of age. This could be due to infection - especially as children often become more active around this time. Sever undernourishment has ensued but by 15 months of age the child has shown a good deal of catch-up growth. The growth line, however, continues below the 3rd centile.
The second chart shows a child who has had a similar onset of undernutrition. In this case, however, the is very poor catch-up growth and the growth failure continues. This child continues to be severely at risk.
Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM)
(Filteau & Akik 2017, UNICEF 2015)
- Extreme wasting or oedema (kwashiorkor)
~16 mill. children <5y affected by SAM
~2/3 in Asia & 1/3 in Africa
- Major cause of death in children <5y
- 9x more likely to die than well-nourished children
- SAM cases ↑dramatically in emergencies
- Majority of cases occur in DCs not affected by emergencies
- Chronic poverty, lack of education, poor hygiene, limited access to food, poor diets
- Lack of sustainable development
Oedematous SAM (kwashiorkor)
(Truswell 2012, Cohen 2017)
what does it cause to the body…
- Incompletely understood but poor prognosis
Death: due to the severity of the problem, due to relapse, due to late admission to hospital…
Illness: general misery, pain, expense to the family, opportunistic infections…
Diarrhoea: opportunistic infections often cause diarrhoea which in turn leads to even worse dehydration. Diarrhoea can be either acute, persistent or chronic – the last two tend to be due to general malnutrition – which alters the gut lining.
Dehydration: partly due to diarrhoea. Requires urgent treatment – ORT. In kwashiorkor – dehydration causes diminished oedema – the oedema will return upon rehydration.
Infections: Most severely malnourished children have an infection – can be difficult to diagnosed because the PEM may mask some of the classic symptoms.
Hypoglycaemia: Low blood sugar can cause brain damage or death if left untreated.
Hypothermia: develops surprisingly easily. Hypothermia occurs when the body’s temperature drops below 35.5°C. Hypothermia is a very common cause of death in malnourished children.
Anorexia: loss of appetite – common in kwashiorkor or marasmic-kwashiorkor.
Anaemia: caused by iron deficiency or folate deficiency. May also be the result of hookworm or malaria – iron should not be given until the child begins to recover due to its free radical properties.
- prolific ROS production + poor antioxidant status
- disruption of cell membrane permeability (mvt. of K & Na)
- water leaks into extracellular space
- May also involve alterations in microbiome & complications of systemic inflammation
- Relatively rare in Asia now but is still common in African hospitals
Kwashiorkor
Acute condition – may, over the course of a few days become incredibly ill.
Oedematous – classic sign of kwashiorkor – due to retention of sodium and body fluid.
May not show reductive adaptations – stunting/wasting
Low potassium, high sodium - due to the leakiness of cell membranes.
Fatty liver – TAGs accumulate in the liver
Free radical damage – is thought to be partially responsible for many of the feature of kwashiorkor.
Long term consequencesof famine
(Dercon & Porta 2014)
(Ampaabeng & Tan 2013)
Case-study: ‘Live-Aid’ 1984 N. Ethiopia
- Severe drought after frequent severe rainfall failure plus conflict
- Exacerbated by politically driven delays in food aid provision
- Up to 1mill. deaths
Effect of household-level drought shock in children on anthropometrics 20y on
- In utero <36mo at peak of nutritional shock
- 12-36mo at time 5cm shorter 20y with a poss. 5% _ income in adulthood
- May be more likely to be ill in adulthood
Case-study: 1983-4 Ghana
- Effect of childhood famine on adult cognitive development 20y on
- 0<2y Vs. 3<8y at height of food shortages (1984)
- 0-2y at time had impaired adult cognitive development
- on average ~6% lower IQ score
- test performance equates to ~two-fifths to a half year loss of schooling
- 3<8y at time unaffected
How to respond to humanitarian crisis?
UNICEF 2015b
short term = prevent and reduce immediate excess morbidity undernutrition and mortality
long term = development solutions that help build the resilience of communities by protecting and supporting people’s long-term health, nutrition and overall livelihoods
