Save The Children - NIGER 22JUL2005

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Save the Children is providing life-saving supplementary and therapeutic feeding together with related healthcare activities for children under 5 in Maradi and Zinder regions of Niger. Initial estimates of 15,000 moderately and severely malnourished children have been revised upwards to 40,000.

Update

A plane will leave Ostend on Wednesday carrying over 40 tonnes of life-saving nutritional supplementary food and equipment for feeding centres in Maradi and Zinder. These items for therapeutic and supplementary care are not available on the local West African market, e.g. Plumpy Nut, and will be accompanied by medical equipment such as hygiene kits and weighing scales.

General Context

A lethal combination of drought and locusts last year decimated the harvest in Niger and has left the country with an estimated 223,000 tonne shortfall of grain to meet the food needs of the local population. There are a wide range of conventional signs (malnutrition rates, high cereal prices) and qualitative indicators (out-migration from villages both earlier than usual and involving more family members) pointing to a serious food security situation affecting much of Niger, particularly in the agropastoral area.

As a result of the poor harvest, this year families have already used up what little reserves of food they had available and without urgent assistance, a quarter of the country's 12 million people will go hungry over the coming months before the new harvest in September. Infant mortality and malnutrition rates have increased sharply as a result.

Save the Children Response

Save the Children teams, including nutritionists and logistics staff, have established bases in Niamey and Maradi. In Maradi supplementary feeding programmes will target moderately malnourished children under 5 to supplement MSF programmes for severely malnourished children. In Zinder, supplementary and therapeutic feeding programmes will target moderately malnourished and severely malnourished children under 5. All families with severely malnourished children will receive a family ration.

Save the Children are sending a plane from Ostend on Wednesday (funded by DFID) carrying over 40 tonnes of life-saving nutritional supplements for children under 5 in Maradi and Zinder. The cargo will comprise:

16 MT of Plumpy Nut (17,391 sachets), a ready to eat food for rapid re-nutrition and/or supplementary feeding (moderately malnourished children will receive 1 sachet per day, severely malnourished children will receive 4 sachets per day)
18 MT of BP-5 supplement, ready to eat directly or to prepare as porridge
160 cartons of Therapeutic Milk treatment for severely malnourished children, to be used in therapeutic feeding during the rapid re-nutrition phase
Tents for feeding centres
Baby weighing scales, height boards, medicine and medical equipment for the feeding centres
Registration and record keeping materials for approximately 3-6 months.

Our plans remain for a 12-month programme but we will use forecasting of the 2006 harvest to determine whether or not to consider an extension to a Save the Children presence.

Emergencies Section

22 July 2005