Famine almost unavoidable in Sahel, without full-scale emergency response

Date: 11/06/12

The food crisis in the Sahel region of West Africa is at critical point, and famine is almost unavoidable for the more than 18 million affected people, says TEAR Fund NZ. TEAR Fund executive director Steve Tollestrup says aid agencies such as TEAR Fund have been warning that the situation was grave since last year, when crops failed but the response has been slow and inadequate. TEAR Fund, through its partners, has been distributing emergency food in Niger for some time, but much more is needed to avoid widespread starvation, he says.

Take the story of Dayaba and her nine-month-old daughter Karima. Karima screamed as her tiny body was measured for malnutrition by medical centre staff. The results confirmed what the eyes suspected; Karima needs urgent help. Karima was immediately given plumpy nut, a ready-to-use therapeutic food supplement which helps malnourished children put on weight, and slowly she started to eat.

Mr Tollestrup says, Karima is just one of thousands of victims counting the cost of Niger’s food crisis. Her mother Dayba says, ‘I feel weak, and I have no breast milk for my baby which makes her cry. She tells of how they came to be at the clinic, when their millet crop failed. 'We didn’t collect any food from the harvest. At the time we planted millet, there was not enough rain.'

 Mr Tollestrup says, the sooner we scale-up our response, the more lives we save and the cost of saving those lives will be reduced. But we need the support of Kiwis to do that. “We are urging people to give so that more children like Karima can survive.”

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