Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, has said that malnutrition is on the rise in rural Madagascar following the country’s recent climate challenges.
Development Diaries reports that in 2022, two cyclones, Bstsirai and Emnati, affected about 423,800 people including 136 people who lost their lives.
According to MSF, the acute food shortages in southeast Ikongo of Madagascar have given rise to malnutrition cases after harvest was destroyed in last year’s cyclones.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis of January 2023 shows that more than a quarter of the population in the Vatovavy-Fitovinany and Atsimo-Atsinanana regions are currently experiencing acute food insecurity.
Also, MSF said it found that nearly one in five children screened were suffering from moderate or severe malnutrition at the onset of the lean season.
The majority of people in southeast Madagascar live off agriculture, mainly crops such as cloves, coffee, vanilla and bananas.
In the Vatovavy-Fitovinany and Atsimo-Atsinanana regions, almost the entire agricultural area was destroyed, including more than half of the food crop.
‘While communities in these areas already have very high rates of chronic malnutrition, the cyclones have tipped them over into an acute situation’, said MSF Head of Mission in Madagascar, Brian Willett.
‘Repeated climate shocks aggravate hardship for communities who have to build back every time’.
Food insecurity is not new in Madagascar but several factors have further impacted health problems among the most vulnerable.
In addition to the cyclones, intermittent rains and persistent crop failures, limited access to health care and Covid-19 have also fueled existing food insecurity.
‘Few humanitarian organisations work in the southeast and we are looking at scaling up our activities’, Willett.
‘Many households tell us that despite careful rationing, their staple food stocks will be completely empty by February.
‘This is worrying as the crop production from this year’s season is expected to be low due to little rain in the beginning of the season.
‘And if yet another cyclone was to hit this season, it would transform this already dire situation into a catastrophe of significant scale’.
Madagascar is one of the countries at most risk from climate change and faces extreme weather events at regular intervals.
Source: MSF
Photo source: UNICEF Ethiopia
