Silent Emergency Needs Voicing

The Times article on Dec. 11 entitled “U.N. Cites Children’s Heavy Death Toll,” called attention to the “silent emergency” that is needlessly killing 14 million children every year and is a positive step toward breaking the silence. The fact that so many children are dying from malnutrition and infection while simple low-cost measures are available to cut the death toll by at least half is appalling. It needs to be pointed out that, while attention was recently focused on the famine in Africa, more children died from malnutrition and infection in India and Pakistan than in all 46 nations of Africa.

The magnitude of the silent emergency is made greater by the fact that never in history has there been an opportunity to save so many lives for so little cost. Examples of low-cost measures are immunization and teaching parents to measure the growth of their children to prevent malnutrition. It is estimated that in half of the cases of malnutrition in developing countries the problem is a lack of awareness of malnutrition rather than the availability of food. In the long run, reducing the number of deaths will also reduce the population growth rate. It has been clearly shown that when parents know their children will survive they tend to have smaller families.

What is needed is a greater commitment to leadership and action on the part of the industrialized nations, including the United States. Millions of lives literally hang in the balance. Seventy-seven countries have set targets to immunize at least 80% of their children by 1990, and it is important that they be actively supported to realize that goal.

RICHARD A. WEST

South Pasadena