While it has been my experience to see many children born into poverty in Haiti and Nicaragua, I believe that the most important challenge facing us as "missionaries" to developing countries is to the children yet conceived, yet born, yet to face hunger and disease. It may be desirous to address the nutritional and health needs of infants and children, but I believe that it is even more important to educate the young women and men before another unsustainable child is born into grinding poverty. It is important to empower women with the right to choose whether to have a child, for it is often the women who will bear the primary responsibility to nurture the new child. Often, these women do not have a choice whether to become a mother, due to cultural, social and economic pressures. Once the child is conceived, it falls on the mother to find food for two when it is often difficult to find it even for herself. The result is pre-natal protein malnutrition, stunted brain growth and developmental delay even before birth.
Since the year I was born, the population of the world has increased from 2 billion people to 6+ billion people. Developed nations today have a negative growth rate, if the contribution of immigration is excluded. People given a third grade education (able to read the news) and enough food to eat realize that there is a lifetime responsibility to have a child with a partner. Therefore, I believe that the most important globa l child health issue takes place before conception of a child in a developing nation. As either the primary cause, or significant secondary cause, the explosion of the world's population is at the root of all poverty and should be the fundamental target of global child health efforts.
Robert H. Hoy, Pharm.D.
Bloomington, IL USA