Totally sad to see the suffering of children in Africa via Comic Relief

[vivizone]

1st time watching Comic Relief. I know the suffering of Africans - I am half East African myself, but my heart is broken seeing these babies suffering so much over preventable stuff. The parent's eyes just kill me - watching their babies dying right in front of them. Suffering.
I am just feeling so emotional about the kids. It's unmeasurable.
I have hated the 'comic' element of the show though.

Sorry I thought this was Chat. On phone.

I cried watching Victor die, terribly sad.

Leave this thread here, see what people say.

Oh that poor boy and having to keep your dead child in the laundry room. It's unimaginable to me that this still happens.

Awful. Awful. I want to hug the parents - they just look so.....lost....

I think the comic element is to lighten what would otherwise be a totally heartbreaking evening.

Not to trivialise it but to help us all realise how lucky we are to be able to have the choice to do so.

I do wish they would show more of the things that RND has achieved over the years too though to give us hope that the efforts do help.

Something really radical needs to be done about the distribution of wealth on a global, transnational scale. Its fucked up. It's just so incomprehensibly wrong that so many children are dying totally unnecessarily.

How lucky we are here - how blessed we are

Yes it is so hard to believe this goes on and on such a big scale. So sad. Such an ill divided world we live in.

On a positive note though, there has been incredible progress. Child mortality has dropped so much over the last couple of decades, including in Africa. Hopefully we can increase the pace of change but there IS improvement.

I think we should also be very proud that even in times of austerity and even with a conservative government, the international aid budget hasn't been cut.

I know what you mean. It is just absolutely heartbreaking to know that this happens so regularly. Totally agree with Farrow on this and with all the comments made here so far.

I have seen some truly idiotic comments on friends status' on Facebook about how Africa has had all this money donated to them and this is still happening. How it is 'bad parenting' to keep having children. Even when people have pointed out that some of these children are the results of rape these people have still been ignorant with their comments. Yes let's punish the children because they asked to be born into that life . Sorry, it just totally fucks me off that some people have these ridiculous views

In the average sub-Saharan country there is no welfare state. If you live there it is important to have children unless you want to be destitute in your old age.

There's also a huge unmet need for contraceptives in many sub-saharan african countries which leads to unwanted and/or mistimed pregnancies. Abortion is often illegal and often unsafe.

And also if you don't have any pension system then you need to have at least a couple of living children to take care of you. If child mortality is high, then to make sure of two or three adult living children, you'll probably aim to have at least five births.

I think your friends may be rather racist and prejudiced eric

Nice to see this thread. The things that happen all the over world, that we have had a glimpse of tonight, are harrowing, and horrific and totally distressing.

Maybe others could remember that when their thread goes on about how their little darlings heard vajazzle and shagging on telly.

The shock, the horror!

the comic element to simply to appeal to the masses that would normally switch channel.

and it works.

I have to admit that I used to be a little blasé about Comic Relief until I had a child myself. I caught up with some of last night on the iPlayer and also watched Martha and Mary last week. I've been sobbing my eyes out at how tragic it is that many of these deaths are so preventable.

Its one of the few things that make me cry and then pay money to the people who made me cry.

Clearly it works.

I hate the way people say 'Africans'
It's not all 54 countries in Africa. I get quite annoyed at the stereotyping actually & I have found schools are doing less & less.

I know op. unspeakably horrible.

The problems in Africa are historic, caused by Europeans (as per usual, not just the British, but every other colonialist power, Dutch, French, Germans - much the same the world over really, bring in the Spanish and look at the instability in Latin America.

'Fake' countries made purely by ownership rather than tribal or natural boundaries. An absolute recipe for civil war.

Sadly you can't wave a magic wand and put the boundaries back to where they were in the early 1800's, as oil and minerals have been discovered. Yet another cause of discontent where the money goes to the elite in power and the poor have little ability to change things.

It really is dreadful. No amount of education seems to change anything.

It's a bit simplistic to just blame Africa's woes on European colonialism. Ethiopia was never colonized and has a coherent state but still has many of the same problems seen in other countries. Botswana is one of the richest and most stable countries but was colonized. And at the risk of sounding cliched, look at Asia. A colonial history and fake state didn't hold Singapore back!