Child malnutrition now a major concern

Child malnutrition in Angola is now believed to have reached levels worse than at any previous time in over 20 years of civil war, according to a new report published this week. The report, based on the results of a survey in the besieged government-held central highlands city of Huambo by Save the Children Fund (UK), Concern and the Angolan health ministry, “provides startling evidence” of the plight of Angola’s population, an SCF spokesman told IRIN. The survey conducted in May, showed that 16.7 percent of children under five in Humabo were suffering from malnutrition, of whom 3.5 percent were severely malnourished. “A conservative estimate of the population of Huambo is around 350,000 of whom about 70,000 are under five,” the report said. “Save the Children fears that this level of malnutrition is likely to be mirrored across the population. if this state of affairs continues, then immunity to disease will decrease and mortality could rise in Huambo.” Huambo, some 520 km southeast of the capital Luanda, has been under siege by UNITA rebels since the breakdown of the UN-brokered Lusaka Protocol peace accords last December. Humanitarian officials in Luanda said they have had no road access to the city and WFP has only been able to fly emergency food in. “Crops have been abandoned or stolen and some farming land has been freshly mined,” the report said. “The crisis had been compounded by the shortage of food for the feeding programme.” It said that 12,000 children in Huambo currently required target feeding, but because of a lack of resources, there was sufficient food to provide for only 2,850 children daily. It was also “abundantly clear” that malnutrition among the Huambo’s own residents was “on par” with that suffered by tens of thousands of internally displaced people sheltering in the city. Nutritional surveys in Huambo, the report said, showed that in January 1994, 8.5 of children were suffering malnutrition. The levels dropped to 7.9 percent in September that year, and to 3.7 percent by April 1995, until the resumption of the war pushed the current figure to 16.7 percent. It urged donors “to heed” UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s appeal last week for further funding to maintain the WFP lifeline to Huambo and Angola’s other besieged provincial capitals.