One year after the international community was mobilized in support of Niger’s food and nutritional crisis, a senior United Nations official in the region is calling for vigilance towards the nutritional vulnerability of children in the Sahel, writes UN News Centre, Wednesday.
– The international community must mobilize both politically and financially, to fight against poverty and child malnutrition in the region of the Sahel, UNICEF Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Esther Guluma, said in a statement released in the capital, Niamey.
Ms. Guluma, who recently visited Burkina Faso and Niger, said she saw firsthand how precarious the nutritional status of children is in the Sahel region, calling the situation for all the countries in the region alarming.
Malnutrition in children under five years old is above critical levels, while acute malnutrition is 10 per cent in Mali, 11 per cent in Chad, 12 per cent in Mauritania, 14 per cent in Niger and 19 per cent in Burkina Faso.
The Sahel region is one of the poorest regions in the world, with more than half of its population living on less than one dollar per day, and extreme poverty leads to some of the highest child mortality rates in the world. More than half of these death are associated with malnutrition and one in five children dies before their fifth birthday.
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