The Food crisis and People with Disabilities

Food is a basic necessity for everyone; but for some, it is a daily issue for survival. For those living under the poverty line in developing countries with little means to provide for their family, the struggle each day is to find sufficient food just to live. Shortages in world food supplies hit poor countries and poor people in those countries hardest as they can least afford a rise in prices.

According to The UN’s World Food Program (WFP), the world faces a serious food shortage now. In some countries, up to two thirds of the population is at risk of shortages, which can develop into famine. The WFP expects that the situation will be difficult to reverse in the short term, and calls the crisis “a silent tsunami that threatens to plunge people on every continent into hunger.”

The escalating price of basic foods threatens to push the more than 100 million people living with a disability in the world’s poorest countries deeper into poverty and starvation. In a crisis, the needs of persons with disabilities may be overlooked by society as priorities switch to survival of the fittest.

Imagine that you live in a poor country with a low income that puts you into the bracket of the poorest of the poor. You have less than a dollar a day to spend and you need all that just to feed your family. When prices go up, you are the first to suffer, as you may not be able to afford to buy what you need.

Then imagine that someone in your family, or you yourself, has a disability. Not only is your family more likely to be poorer than the average family in your community; when prices go up, you may face starvation due to lack of income and inability to afford to feed your family.

Moreover, in a food crisis, the general vulnerability to disability increases, as malnourished mothers are more likely to give birth to impaired children, and malnourished infants and children are more likely to acquire an impairment that could develop later into a disability.

cbm president Professor Allen Foster said: “The needs of people with disability can often be forgotten in a crisis. When food is scarce and expensive, how does a blind person find the food, how does the deaf person hear about it, how does the person who cannot walk access food?”

It is these often forgotten people that cbm is trying to support, but what can cbm do?

Professor Allen Foster explained: “Work by cbm in countries in Africa and Asia shows that families with a person blind from cataract have $0.60-0.75 to spend per person per day on food. This is significantly less than families in the same society without a person with disability. However, after sight restoring surgery, the expenditure ability of these families has been shown to increase by more than 30%, releasing them from extreme poverty and enabling them to have more money to buy food and avoid starvation.” cbm is working with partners around the world to prevent and treat the diseases that can lead to disability, poverty and starvation. Last year CBM partners performed over 670,000 cataract surgeries to restore sight.

cbm also works to advocate for the rights of persons with disability. Disability is a crosscutting issue that has to be addressed in mainstream development if the Millennium Development Goals of eradicating poverty and hunger worldwide are to be achieved. Persons with disabilities have an equal right to education, health, employment and livelihood programmes that can increase their income and have a real impact on their quality of life. Therefore, cbm is working to ensure that persons with disabilities are included in food programmes and can gain access to vital health and education services.

For those families living on less than US$1 a person a day, the impact of soaring food prices can be catastrophic, but by making health services, education and livelihood opportunities accessible, cbm and its partners are making a difference to reduce poverty and ensure there is sufficient daily food so as to improve the quality of life of persons with disability in the poorest countries of the world.