The world is mourning yet again as it plunged into sorrow with the recent Malaysia Airlines (MAS) flight MH17 catastrophe.

While the world is still reeling in disbelief over the missing of Boeing 777-200ER flight MH370 in March where 239 lives diminished; three months on we have lost 298 innocent souls.

Elsewhere in Gaza, atrocities are happening – 500 people have died since the Israeli campaign against Hamas started over two weeks ago.

Now, that brings us to a total of around 1037 lives lost.

Not to mention the millions of other people around the world who are dying from disease, famine and war.

If you’re feeling a bit macabre, search “World death clock” on Google and it will tell you that 56 million people die every year. There is even a little moving counter that increases in number ever second.

As a society we have been desensitized to these numbers. Every day we consume news about death and destruction to the point where the value of life is lost on us. We have inevitably developed this acute inability to appreciate losses of life as they become larger.

As Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Gyorgi said, “I am deeply moved if I see one man suffering and would risk my life for him. Then I talk impersonally about the possible pulverization of our big cities, with a hundred million dead. I am unable to multiply one man’s suffering by a hundred million.”

As a media practitioner, we need to get the news out as quickly as possible yet we tend to forget what these numbers actually mean. We push aside our feelings and emotions and cease to empathize with the people affected by the tragedies we report on. We get a story out before we steadfastly soldier on to the next.

Recently, I have been tasked to compile the stories of those who perished in the downed MH17 jetliner and I can’t contain my emotions anymore.

Countries all over the world lost people. People who just wanted to travel the world, to visit friends, and to come home. People just like you.

Given the duty at hand, I feel it is important that we tell these stories; that we humanize the numbers and bring a sense of intimacy with the lives of those we lost on MH17.

This humble reporter hopes that their stories will unleash a tidal wave of compassion and triggering humanitarian movement around the world-but maybe I am asking too much?

To quote the great Aristotle: “The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival."