The World Food Programme (WFP) says it urgently needs U.S.$69 million over the next six months to scale up its humanitarian efforts in southern Madagascar.

Severe hunger has touched over 1.1 million people with 14,000 of them one step away from famine, according to WFP.

Madagascar has suffered from exceptionally warm temperatures, deficits in rainfall and unexpected sandstorms that have covered fields, left crops wilted and harvests well below average.

Adding to an already dire situation, a recent upsurge of locusts is expected to affect an estimated 400,000 hectares of land and worsen by the end of 2021, with the number of people in famine-like conditions expected to double.

Since April 2021, Madagascar has been facing a major outbreak of the Malagasy Migratory Locust – a voracious insect threatening rice and maize crops.

‘The changing climate has meant that many families who were able to live off the land 15 years ago have now fallen into severe hunger’, WFP’s Regional Director, Southern Africa, Menghestab Haile, said in a statement.

‘Families are scavenging for survival and many are living only on the food assistance they receive.

‘I recently met a mother who told me that she had lost her 8-month-old to seeds from cactus fruit that had accumulated in his stomach. The face of hunger in southern Madagascar is horrific.

‘The drought has led to the complete disappearance of food sources, leaving families visibly famished and resorting to survival measures such as eating locusts, wild leaves and cactus leaves which are usually fed to cattle.

‘Vulnerable children are bearing the brunt of the crisis with malnutrition in under-fives expected to quadruple, crossing the half million mark by April 2022′.

According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) analysis, 1.31 million people in the Grand Sud will face high levels of acute food insecurity while the Ambovombe Androy district will in a worst-case scenario be at risk of famine.

WFP Chief of Nutrition Innovative Financing, Anna Horner, who recently visited southern Madagascar, said, ‘The number of malnourished children coming to health centres in southern Madagascar has doubled compared to this time last year.

‘Many of them are too weak to laugh or cry, let alone play and learn. The physical and mental damage to children due to malnutrition can be irreversible.

‘It is heart-wrenching to see so many young minds and bodies unnecessarily suffering from hunger and malnutrition’.

WFP said it was increasingly concerned about the situation in Madagascar and has been ringing the alarm bells over the climate-induced hunger crisis.

‘WFP has been reaching around 700,000 people monthly with emergency life-saving food as well as supplementary nutrition products for pregnant and nursing women and children’, the statement said.

‘Moving beyond emergency support, WFP together with the government, is implementing long-term resilience building activities that help communities adapt to the changing climate. These include access to water, reforestation, sand dune stabilisation and economic support like access to microinsurance schemes in case of crop failure’.

WFP said it provided 3,500 households with U.S.$100 each in September this year to recover losses from the failed maize crop.

Source: WFP

Photo source: WFP