Sunday, July 24, 2005

ETC: Nutritional Crisis in Niger

Dude, every time I see coverage of the situation in Niger it makes me cry.

Before having a critter of my own, the idea of starving children seemed horrible... but only in the abstract sense, I'm ashamed to admit.
Now, every time I see the footage of that mother trying to hold her emaciated baby's head up on its incredibly sad, weak little neck so that she can give it a drink of water, I feel paralyzed with sadness.

So we've donated some money to Doctors Without Borders' campaign to fight this situation. If you've got a few spare bucks kicking around, maybe give it some thought? (You can donate online. Here's the link to the Doctors Without Borders site in Canada, and here's their U.S. site. If you don't live in Canada or the U.S., just type "Doctors Without Borders" into Google to find your country's chapter.)

If you're not familiar with Doctors Without Borders, here's a brief description from their site:
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in nearly 70 countries.
Sorry this isn't exactly book-related, but this is something that needs to get out there, and I needed to do my own tiny part.

1 comment:

BB said...

No, thanks for the heads up and the link! It's easy to get wrapped up in silly day-to-day things and forget about the real issues we all need to be working on.