A Different Perspective

BY RoBERT MACKLIN

Canberra Times
Feb. 8, 2002

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Australia’s toll in the World Trade Center tragedy has fallen markedly from the 96 estimated killed in those first terrible days. On his visit to New York last week Prime Minister John Howard revealed that there were 17 Australian casualties. And the total deaths, once thought to be in the tens of thousands, has now fallen to below 3,000.

To the families affected such numbers are meaningless. But politicians have not been beyond using them to their advantage. So the New Internationalist magazine has just published some figures to provide a different perspective.

On that same September 11, it reveals:

• 24,000 people died of hunger;

• 6,020 children were killed by diarrhea;

• 2,700 children were killed by measles;

• 1,411 women died in childbirth; and

• 3,288 children were made homeless by war.

Time for a war on poverty perhaps?

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