I’ve been working with Save the Children for over four years, both in London and as part of the emergency response team in South Sudan, DRC, Kenya and Niger.
We set off this morning to the clinic for severely malnourished children in Aguie, Maradi region, Niger. We were looking for Saminou, a two-year-old boy we met last September in the clinic where he was being treated by Save the Children. His tiny, skeletal face, captured by Sky News, had moved enough hearts to prompt £10,000 of donations to Niger. Now Sky News were back to find out what happened next.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the rains here – when 86% of people live off 11% of the land, where animals are the main source of wealth, and where water is precious — the rains can make or break people’s lives. Malaria erupted with the onset of this years’ rains and there was heavy flooding in certain areas. Now they’ve ended and the harvest has begun there’s much to be positive about.
Tsahirou was brought to Save the Children in May this year. He was suffering from severe malnutrition and diarrhoea, he needed oxygen and antibiotics, but after just ten days of treatment his health had improved so much he was able to feed, smile and play. This week we went to see Tsiharou in his village. The fragile, skeletal baby had been replaced by a healthy round little boy. It was wonderful to see.
In the UK, it rains heavily and it’s annoying. In Niger it rains heavily and – if you’re poor, and you probably are – it’s economic breakdown.
Women like Abuda live all over Niger. With almost no education, support, or resources they’re still coming up with intelligent ways to support themselves and their families. They’re enterprising and they’re finding their own ways out of poverty, but they live in one of the hardest places in the world.
Unless the rain becomes more regular soon, another year’s crops may fail. If that happens, this food crisis is going to escalate even further leaving pastoral and agricultural families across Niger even more desperate.
Today is the 50th anniversary of Niger’s independence from France and there’s a party mood in the capital, Niamey. The office is closed, Ramadan begins in about a week, and people are taking the chance to have fun.
We need community workers, cars and fuel to physically go out, find these children, bring them back and save their lives.
And we need to help families in the longer term. They need food now, but they also needs to be protected from having to sell seeds and tools for just a few days of food.
We’ve been worried that this would be a silent emergency where few people knew or cared about children in Niger, but this week alone people have been in touch from Austalia, Korea, Italy, Spain, Canada and the UK – it’s great that this crisis is making it onto the world’s media agenda.
7.7 million people are going hungry. 127,000 children under five years old have been admitted to hospital for malnutrition-related problems since the start of the year. That’s like having a city the size of Oxford full of no one but starving babies and toddlers. It’s terrifying.
