"It's
a great start, I'm really excited," says Mija Ververs,
a nutritionist from the International Federation in Geneva.
Mija is overseeing the distribution of food in the small town
of Bambeye, Tahoua province, about 550 kilometres northeast
of the capital Niamey.
With logistical backing from the British Red Cross, this is
the first instalment in a coordinated and rapid emergency response
to the Niger food crisis. It involves not only the British Red
Cross but also delegates from the French and Spanish Red Cross
Societies, colleagues from the Niger National Society and nutritionists
and doctors from Geneva.
Over recent days, Mija and her team have been training local
volunteers and Niger health ministry nurses. Their task is to
handle the delicate process of food distribution in this hunger-stricken
region, one of the country's worst affected.
"Now they start putting the theory into practice,”
says Mija. Behind her, mothers and their children line up in
the compound of the local health clinic for rations of Unimix.
This enriched flour combined with oil is made into a life-saving
porridge.
Drastic needs
For 70 year-old Salifou Sabit, one of the Bambeye commune elders,
the distribution is a life-line to a frantic population. "The
children are suffering greatly," he says. "The people
do not have enough money and the prices of grain are so much
higher than last year. If it continues like this, we will start
dying."
The terrible irony of Niger's crisis is that food stocks are
available. This is not a famine in the technical sense. Even
in Bambeye, some local traders are selling millet and meat but
the stocks are small and the prices are high.
The cost of a small bowl of millet has rocketed from 400 CFA
(60 US cents) to 1,000 CFA following last year’s early
end to the rainy season. A staple diet is now far beyond the
household budgets of hundreds of thousands of people.
There may be a good harvest this year. The rainy season has
started well and many crops are growing but this is no use to
those who could not afford to plant in the first place. Any
interruption in the rains would be catastrophic.
Quiet suffering
In Bambeye, it is not hard to find the people who have fallen
through the net. Bouli Oumarou is 90 years old. She sits in
the doorway of her small house with her granddaughter, Hassana.
Things could hardly be worse for this family. Bouli says they
get something to eat every three or four days. Even then, it
is impossibly inadequate.
Hassana's father is disabled and cannot work in the fields.
Instead, he travels the region on his donkey begging for handouts.
Hassana's mother tries to work their plot of land. She finds
walking difficult, having injured her leg in a fall a few years
ago. She is also pregnant.
"There has been no hope for us," says Bouli, cradling
a clearly malnourished Hassana. The child stares listlessly
into space, breathing heavily through what sounds like a severe
respiratory tract infection.
Help is at hand. If she is diagnosed as an acute case, Hassana
will receive therapeutic treatment at the Medecins Sans Frontieres
centre in Bambeye. If she has yet to enter the critical phase,
she will receive all the supplementary nutrition she needs from
the Red Cross.
The main Red Cross distributions of 138 tonnes of Unimix for
the first month will target some 23,000 vulnerable children
in four provinces in Niger. They will combine with general distributions
of family rations from the World Food Programme.
Not everyone in Bambeye will receive a ration from the first
distribution; the rest will be taken care of soon. But there
are sick, hungry and frightened children who will be eating
tonight – and many more to come.
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Mothers
wait for Bambeye food distribution. (p13171)
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A
Malnourished child at Bambeye distribution. (p13173)
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The
Nutritionist Mija Ververs with Red Cross volunteers (p13172)
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Hassana
and her grandmother Bouli who says they get something
to eat every three or four days. (p13174)
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