Niger: Food aid focuses on kids
2005-07-28 23:33
Miyahi - Now that Niger's most vulnerable have been mostly taken in hand, relief agencies are widening their ministrations to children who feel only a gnawing ache in their bellies - those at "moderate" risk for severe malnutrition.
Hundreds of hollow-eyed mothers crowd into patchy shade outside the district hospital, about 90km northeast of Maradi, considered the epicentre of the food crisis threatening one in three of Niger's 12 million people.
Their children hang limply in their arms, wilting under the heat, but also from an increasingly acute food shortage in their community caused by years of unyielding drought and an invasion of locusts that devoured one-third of the desert country's cereal production last year.
Action against hunger
But today, they hoped their children would eat; maybe a traditional "ball" of millet paste and water, maybe a porridge made with fortified milk.
Since the early hours of the morning, more than 100 children had passed by the desk of Hama Rhali, the local director of a Spanish project of Action Contre la Faim (ACF, Action Against Hunger).
Rhali's criteria was strict; only 41 children were admitted after their size, weight and general health were evaluated.
The rest were sent home, their conditions too good to be considered sufficiently malnourished, though by the bowed shoulders of their mothers as they trudge away, one could think that they had failed in some way.
Mom offered food too
Her skin covered in white spots, her eyes glazed over, eight-month-old Hadiza, at just 3.4kg for her 57cm was one of the first to be admitted, her height and weight classifying her as severely malnourished.
Her mother was gently steered towards a neighbouring building, where she too would be fed, offered a feast of high-calorie pasta and vitamin-added milk.
Country director for the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), Aboudu Karimou Adjibade, said: "One of the biggest problems is that Niger society is very patriarchal, with the man being the landowner and responsible for all decisions concerning the home.
Less malnutrition
Adjibade said: "So here in the south, at the epicentre of the food crisis, the portion of food left to the woman and child is the smallest.
"Compare that to the north, dominated by the matrilineal Tuareg people, where we are seeing less malnutrition."
After Hadiza was tended to, the ACF staff turned to year-old Ali Hussein, whose numbers were slightly more reassuring, 5.8kg for 68cm.
They handed his mother, Saliya, a thin sack of medication, including vitamin A and folic acid and a 5kg of enriched flour with which to feed her son for two weeks.
International aid, slow to arrive in the early months of the food crisis, had started to pour into Niger, among the world's least developed countries and no stranger to chronic malnutrition.