Several years of drought and other factors have left millions in southern Madagascar hungry, the World Food Programme (WFP) and other agencies, report.
The food agency says the lack of food sources has created a full-blown nutrition emergency.
Malnutrition has almost doubled over four months to March, from 9 to 16 percent they say.
They also cite alarming nutrition levels among children under five years.
Children with acute malnutrition are four times more likely to die than healthy children.
“The malnutrition rates on average have gone, over the past 3 months, from 8 to 16 percent on average in all the districts but in some districts, it has gone up to 27 percent. This is alarming, this is life-threatening and whichever way you look at, this is starvation happening before our eyes,” said Amer Daoudi, the WFP Director of Operations in Madagascar.
Daoudi said unexpected sandstorms have buried croplands and pasture, and vast swathes of arable land have been transformed into wasteland.
Poor rains during the planting season signal another failed harvest this year, likely to result in a more severe lean season from October 2021 to March 2022.
Food production in 2021 is expected to be less than 50 percent of the last five-year average, another bitter blow for families on the brink of survival, WFP also added.
In a bid to escape hunger people are leaving their villages to reach urban centers.
About 3,000 people recently walked tens of kilometers to reach Fort-Dauphin hoping to get a meal at a center runs by nuns, that serves food supplied by WFP once a day.
“We cannot allow this to continue, we need to do everything that we can to do that. WFP stands ready and is assisting people with the current available resources we have, which will run out in the next 2 months. We need donations now in order to be able to meet the needs over the next few months,” said Daoudi.
At least 1.14 million people in the Grand Sud need emergency food and nutrition assistance and have been suffering from hunger since the start of the lean season last September.
WFP says the situation is affecting at least 1.4 million people and that it urgently needs USD 74 million over the next six months to provide emergency aid.
via Reuters
