Fast Facts: The Faces of Poverty (From www.unmillenniumproject.org)

Following are basic facts outlining the roots and manifestations of the poverty affecting more than one third of our world.


Health

* Every year, 6 million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.

* More than 50 percent of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhea.

* Everyday HIV/AIDS kills 6,000 people and another 8,200 people are infected with this deadly virus.

* Every 30 seconds an African child dies of malaria - more than one million child deaths a year.

* Each year, approximately 300 to 500 million people are infected with malaria. Approximately three million people die as a result.

* TB is the leading AIDS-related killer and in some parts of Africa, 75 percent of people with HIV also have TB.


Hunger

* More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day...300 million are children.

* Of these 300 million children, only eight percent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 percent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.

* Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5.


Water

* More than 2.6 billion people-over 40 per cent of the world's population-do not have basic sanitation, and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.

* Four out of every ten people in the world don't have access even to a simple latrine.

* Five million people, mostly children, die each year from water-borne diseases.


Agriculture

* In 1960, Africa was a net exporter of food; today the continent imports one-third of its grain.

* More than 40 percent of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-to-day basis.

* Declining soil fertility, land degradation, and the AIDS pandemic have led to a 23 percent decrease in food production per capita in the last 25 years even though population has increased dramatically.

* For the African farmer, conventional fertilizers cost two to six times more than the world market price.


The devastating effect of poverty on women

* Above 80 percent of farmers in Africa are women.

* More than 40 percent of women in Africa do not have access to basic education.

* If a girl is educated for six years or more, as an adult her prenatal care, postnatal care and childbirth survival rates, will dramatically and consistently improve.

* Educated mothers immunize their children 50 percent more often than mothers who are not educated.

* AIDS spreads twice as quickly among uneducated girls than among girls that have even some schooling.

* The children of a woman with five years of primary school education have a survival rate 40 percent higher than children of women with no education.

* A woman living in sub-Saharan Africa has a 1 in 16 chance of dying in pregnancy. This compares with a 1 in 3,700 risk for a woman from North America.

* Every minute, a woman somewhere dies in pregnancy or childbirth. This adds up to 1,400 women dying each day-an estimated 529,000 each year-from pregnancy-related causes.

* Almost half of births in developing countries take place without the help of a skilled birth attendant.