MSF calls to accelerate and increase the deployment of nutritional assistance
The Sahelian belt of Chad is facing one of its worst nutrition crises in recent years. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling for faster and larger deployment of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of the most vulnerable people, particularly children under the age of 5.
Several factors including erratic rains, failed harvests, soaring food prices, food stocks running out and poor access to healthcare have contributed to the increase of malnutrition rates. In the Hadjer Lamis region, recent rapid nutrition screening shows that more than 5% of children under five are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and are at risk of dying. Today, in this region alone, an estimated 5,000 children are in urgent need of nutritional assistance.
“We are very worried about the number of severely malnourished children that our medical teams are seeing – close to 3,000 children were admitted in our programmes in the month of May,” explains Dr Benoit Kayembe, MSF emergency medical coordinator in Chad.
This current rise in malnutrition is a warning that the situation will get worse as the 'hunger season' is only just beginning. More children are at risk of becoming severely malnourished in the coming weeks, until the next harvest is expected to begin in October.
National authorities, local and international actors have initiated a response to this severe food security crisis. Despite these efforts, there are still many communities who are not receiving food and nutritional assistance. MSF calls for an acceleration of the emergency response in all affected areas to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, particularly children under five.
MSF is currently implementing emergency nutrition interventions in the Hadjer Lamis, Batha, Guéra, Salamat and Quaddai regions as well as in the capital N’Djamena. Our activities include in-patient and ambulatory therapeutic feeding centres and targeted food distributions for over 60 000 children in the coming weeks.
Chad is not the only country facing this malnutrition crisis. Most countries located in the Sahel region are experiencing an increased number of malnourished children. MSF has also already started emergency nutrition programmes, or reinforced existing ones, in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Sudan.
MSF recently launched Starved for Attention, a global campaign to highlight the crisis of childhood malnurition and how increased childhood sickness and death can be prevented with effective nutrition interventions: www.starvedforattention.org
A mother brings her child to the MSF feeding centre in the Massakory hospital in Chad. May 2010.
Photo by MSF
MSF is an international medical humanitarian organisation that has been working in Chad since 1981. MSF is presently providing medical assistance to the Chadian population, resident and displaced, in Abéché, Adé, Kerfi and Dogdoré as well as to refugees having fled the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur and Central African Republic. MSF has also intervened in Chad in response to medical emergencies such as measles and meningitis outbreaks.