Rains are falling but hunger persists

Though seasonal rains are plumping up skinny herds and the semi-desert of southern Mauritania is turning green, the World Food Programme has warned that it takes more than one good harvest to right the losses of many bad years. “The lean season has come to an end and the harvest is coming in but it is still the case that after years of successive drought and last year’s locust invasion, people don’t recover after just one good harvest,” said Marcus Prior, WFP’s spokesman for West Africa on Friday. “The result of several many bad years remains apparent.” Though WFP has been distributing food aid in Mauritania since the beginning of the year, there remain pockets of severe malnutrition among children in Gharbi in the far south and Hodh el Chargi in the extreme south east. WFP is expanding its feeding operation to reach these remote corners, but with the exception of NGO Medecines sans Frontiers, there is a shortage of nutritional experts on the ground who can give the hungriest children the medical attention they need, explained Prior. According to WFP surveys conducted last month, over 17 percent of children under five are severely malnourished in the south east of Mauritania. Severe malnutrition among children can cause long term behavioural problems, handicap and if it is not treated can result in death. WFP has received US $17.7 million for feeding operations in Mauritania in 2005 through to 2007, but contributions have been 43 percent below the target figure. Though current feeding operations are not in danger, Prior warned that more funds would have to be found to maintain the flow of food which 400,000 people have so far benefited from. Mauritania, a vast desert country on the far west of the Sahara, has suffered years of successive drought and last year was one of the countries worst hit by the largest plague of locusts seen in West Africa for 15 years. The locust swarms decimated farmer’s crops and the vegetation that sustains the herds of Mauritania’s wandering desert nomads, were stripped to the ground ruining livelihoods in a country which is already one of the poorest in the world.