Western villages need "urgent" help

Urgent action is needed to alleviate the "very poor" nutritional situation of children in villages located near western Tanzania's refugee camps, a UNICEF report said. Increasing numbers of malnourished children from local villages were being admitted to therapeutic feeding centres in the refugee camps, with community children now making up about 60 percent of the centres' beneficiaries. The nutritional status in camps was now four or five times better than in the surrounding villages, the report said. The problem was "threatening the survival of many young children" in local communities in the Kigoma and Kagera areas, it said. The situation was attributed to two years of consecutive poor harvests and lack of agricultural inputs, among other factors. Recent surveys have found a 8.9 percent malnutrition rate among children under five years old in villages surrounding camps, while the prevalence of stunting ranged from 43-63 percent of the children surveyed.