25-22
Adapting the checklist for use in your area
The Browns’ checklist is designed to help health workers look mainly at the
food problems of children. To look at the food problems of other persons in
the community, such as pregnant women, mothers, or sick persons, additional
questions will need to be asked. Also, for many parts of the world the checklist
will need to be revised to include other important causes of hunger. There may be
other useful questions for your particular area or situation that you or your
health workers would want to include in your own checklist.
Notice that in the Browns’ checklist some of the more sensitive political and
economic questions have not been directly asked—questions such as:
• Is most of the good farmland owned by only a few people?
• Are wages so low that people have trouble feeding their families?
• Do landholders and merchants bribe local authorities in order to illegally
maintain large land holdings, high food prices, or exploitative interest rates on
loans of grain or money?
• Do village shopkeepers stock alcoholic or fizzy drinks, vitamin tonics, or
expensive canned foods, rather than badly needed low-cost foods?
In some places, care must be taken about asking questions such as these. The
solutions to them are never quick or easy. Yet in many communities, these issues
have more to do with malnutrition than all of the other questions put together.
Although the social causes of poor nutrition must be approached with caution and
careful timing, we cannot afford to close our eyes to them.
WHEN FACED WITH SENSITIVE POLITICAL OR
SOCIAL ISSUES AFFECTING HEALTH,
DON’T STICK YOUR NECK OUT
UNNECESSARILY,
BUT DON’T HIDE YOUR HEAD
IN THE SAND EITHER.
In the long run, one way can prove as dangerous as the other.