It’s a day since I wrote my last blog entry.

24 hours.
1440 minutes.
86,400 seconds

Many of you will know that, every three seconds, a child dies of poverty-related illness. So since I last blogged, assuming an average day, 28,400 children will have died around the world.

I just can’t take this in. It’s almost digestible when you treat the figures, despite their enormity, as a single statistic. But we must view it as it really is. It’s 28,400 individual tragedies. And as anyone who has ever suffered bereavement knows, the loss of a single person affects many, many times more people than just the victim. The loss of 28,400 lives affects hundreds of thousands of people.

But the loss runs even deeper than that. It’s an affront to our collective dignity and our shared humanity that we are prepared to sit idly by in our collective indifference while another child dies. And another. And another.

Let’s make no more excuses. We wouldn’t do allow such loss in any other circumstances. 40 years on from Aberfan, we would not allow a coal heap near a school. 10 years on from Dunblane, we wouldn’t consider relaxing our gun laws. And why should we? It would insult the memories and the lives of every single one of those children to do so.

In the same way, I ask all those who are reading this blog to consider if they could do something to beat the scourge of poverty. Sponsor a child. Give a sum you can afford to a charity you trust. (This isn’t just a plug for the charity I chair – Africa Enterprise Trust - but it’d be foolish not to mention it…). Pray. But whatever else happens, let’s do something. It’s within our grasp to put an end to poverty. And it’s certainly within our gift – YOUR gift – to put an end to it for one of tomorrow’s 28,400.