More than one million children are in danger of becoming severely malnourished in the Sahel region of Africa. Children in eight countries—Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal—are at risk. UNICEF is already seeing pockets of severe acute malnutrition above the emergency threshold.
The Sahel is one of the poorest regions in the world where children already face daunting odds of survival. Without immediate humanitarian aid, an already desperate situation will only become worse. Poor harvests, rising food prices, and ineffective systems to address nutrition, health and water needs have left hundreds of thousands of children vulnerable and weak. The “lean season”—when food from the last harvest runs out—is expected to begin as early as March in some countries.
UNICEF is providing nutrition supplies as well as clean water and sanitation facilities to prevent a wide-scale crisis. Please donate online to support UNICEF’s relief efforts for children in emergencies.
Specially developed ready-to-use therapeutic foods are the best way to treat severe acute malnutrition among children under five so they have a chance to survive and recover. The biggest challenge is providing sufficient amounts of these critical foods to children as the need increases in the coming months.
“The children at risk today in the Sahel are not mere statistics by which we may measure the magnitude of a potential humanitarian disaster,” says Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director. “They are individual girls and boys, and each has the right to survive, to thrive and to contribute to their societies. We must not fail them.”