UN on Niger: "In the last few days, the world has finally woken up"

Photo: A malnourished child is being weighed upon his arrival at a Doctors Without Borders aid.   The bobbing needle only confirms what Doctor Chantal Umutoni feared -- five and a half kilograms, when he should weigh at least 15. (AFP/File)

Fri Jul 22, 2005 MARADI, Niger (AFP) - So weak that he cannot raise his hand to swipe away the flies that settle on him, Hamissou lies still in the arms of his grandmother, who herself can barely muster the strength to lift him onto the scale.

The chances for survival of this three-year-old are as slim as his spindly arms and legs, making him yet another potential victim of the hunger afflicting Niger.

After months of warnings and desperate appeals for aid, the northwest African country is on the brink of a full-scale malnutrition crisis that threatens at least one quarter of its 12 million people.

"In early May, we recorded 390 admissions per week. Last week we were at 717," said a visibly worried Mego Terzian, field coordinator for the relief organization Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, Doctors Without Borders), which has set up therapeutic feeding centers in the hardest-hit south and center of the vast nation.

Maradi, some 600 kilometers (360 miles) east of the capital Niamey, is considered the epicenter of the food crisis produced by years of drought and compounded by last year's invasion of desert locusts, the worst to hit Niger and its Sahel neighbors in more than a decade.

With its national cereal stocks depleted and prices of imports soaring, Niger is facing a crisis that could rob parents of 150,000 children before it is over, according to estimates from international relief organizations.

International aid has been slowly arriving in the form of fruit juices and bags of grain from countries such as Libya and Morocco, but western donor mainstays have only begun to offer sizable contributions of financial and in-kind assistance.

A first planeload of food from France, coordinated by the relief agency Reunir, or reunite, founded by former health minister Bernard Kouchner, arrived Thursday.

Other laden Antonov cargo planes bearing nutritive-packed peanut butter, peanut oil and grains are also expected to touch down over the weekend.

"In the last few days, the world has finally woken up," a triumphant Jan Egeland, coordinator of relief for the United Nations, said Friday from Geneva.

"We got in ten days more than in the past ten months (and) I am hopeful that we will get most of what we have appealed for," he said of the 30 million-dollar request for food, development and medical aid launched by the UN.

"This is not much money: this is 20 minutes of the world's military spending. I think the world can afford it."

The United Nations is not alone to stump for aid for Niger, no stranger to chronic malnutrition as one of the world's least developed countries with poverty levels at a crushing 80 percent.

In an appeal to ensure that Niger's Sahel neighbors escape its hungry fate, the International Committee of the Red Cross on Friday asked for another 11.5 million euros (14 million dollars) to help feed Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso.

"The next harvest is due in three months, so seeds will need to be distributed and sown in the next couple of weeks," ICRC mission coordinator Langdon Greenhalgh said.

The next couple of weeks are also critical for children like Hamissou, whose bloated belly, skeletal limbs and glazed expression are symptomatic of marasma, an advanced stage of malnutrition.

Children treated at MSF's feeding centers are carefully pumped full of nutrients in an easily digestible form, with PlumpyNut peanut butter a favored way to bring their weight levels up in a healthy and sustained way.

More than 12,000 children have passed through the MSF centers since January, spending as much time as needed under the care and ministration of the doctors and volunteers until they reach their proper weight.

Thirteen-month-old Bacha is almost there, having added two kilograms in the last 15 days.

"I am so, so happy," said his relieved mother, Ai, who came from Zinder, 220 kilometers east, for treatment for her son and will depart soon bearing food supplies to feed Bacha's six other brothers and sisters.

"He is a different baby."

Report courtesy http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/nigerfoodcrisis

Tags: Niger Africa Sahel Maradi malnutrition aid workers Burkina Faso Libya West Africa Antonov Plumpynut Doctors Without Borders famine locusts Mali Mauritania