To the editor:

In Acapulco, I once daily ate lunch with two young gaunt, stunted children.

We ate free at a Catholic outdoor parish with an adjoining building for priests. We had rice and eggs, but I don’t recall meat.

Stunted children with also consequential diminished intellects will rarely enter the lower middle class.

There are a few impoverished people on Bainbridge. With empathy you, rich or poor, can urge the U.S. to invest more than 1 percent of our international development assistance in nutrition. Malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDs also are raiding the world’s poor. The U.S. should pledge $15 billion over three years, through the Global Fund, to save 10 million lives from those scourges.

Today, let’s urge President Obama and Congress to fund $1.35 billion for 2014 through 2016 for global nutrition programs. Ignorance is no longer your excuse.

JOHN FREEBURG

Bremerton