According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), due to an increasing food shortage in the Sahel region of West Africa, more than a million children are at risk of severe and life-threatening malnutrition.
The agency stated that there is already a growing need for therapeutic foods and emergency stocks in affected countries. Niger is the country reported to be the most at risk, with an estimated 330,600 children under the age of five suffering from malnutrition.
Other countries where children are at a high risk for malnutrition Chad, northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and northern Senegal.
UNICEF’s regional director for Africa, David Gressly, said: “A tragedy will be averted only by an unprecedented effort in the Sahel. This will involve making sure that professionals are on the ground with the right supplies and that enough is done to contain the threat of opportunistic diseases among the weakened populations.”
UNICEF also stated that there will be need for not only enhanced nutrition and health programmes, but also provision of clean water, sanitation at feeding centres as well as emergency education and protection for children displaced with their families.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Geneva, regional food production in the Sahel is down by 8% compared to last year.
Much of the blame has been put on erratic rains and high imported rice and wheat prices against a backdrop of chronic food insecurity and malnutrition.
Year after year parts of the Sahel experience global acute malnutrition rates that surpass emergency thresholds. A third of the population of Chad is chronically undernourished, regardless of the rains or size of the harvest; and more than 50% of the population in Niger suffers from food insecurity, with 2% extremely food insecure, according to the World Bank in 2009.
Source: UNICEF
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