Media Home
UN Web TV
UN PhotoUnifeed
NIGER / FOOD CRISIS
STORY: NIGER / FOOD CRISIS
TRT: 1.47
SOURCE: WFP
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 24, 25 MARCH 2010, NIGER
24 MARCH 2010 DOGONDOUTCHI, NIGER
1. Wide Shot, Niger landscape,
2. Med shot, people sitting by the Dogondoutchi Supplementary Feeding Center
3. Various shots, malnourished children being weighed and measured
25 MARCH 2010 DOGONDOUTCHI, NIGER
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Gianluca Ferrera, Deputy Country Director, WFP Niger:
"Malnutrition has been recognized as a public disease only after the 2005 crises. Before that it was not recognized as a public disease, so there was no treatment in place for children. So even if someone were malnourished in a household it was not treated, they were maybe treating the opportunistic diseases like malaria and diarrhea but it was not treated as malnourished as such."
25 MARCH 2010, NAIMEY, NIGER
5. Wide shot, woman carrying baby entering the Dogondoutchi Supplementary Feeding Center
5. Various shots, children receiving fortified cereals
6. Wide shot, exterior Medinah Clinic Naimey
25 MARCH 2010 DOGONDOUTCHI, NIGER
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Gianluca Ferrera, Deputy Country Director, WFP Niger:
"We need resources now and those funds will be used to purchase cereals in the region that will be delivered to distribution points very fast."
25 MARCH 2010, NAIMEY, NIGER
8. Tilt up, woman leaving the Medinah Clinic behind
The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) today announced it is more than doubling the number of hungry people it feeds in Niger, providing assistance to 2.3 million people caught in a worsening food crisis caused by drought in the eastern Sahel.
Weak and erratic rainfall across parts of the eastern Sahel has destroyed harvests and parched land used by pastoralist communities to graze livestock. In January, results of a national survey found that more than half Niger’s population of 13.5 million is food insecure.
Gianluca Ferrera, WFP’s Deputy Country Director in Niger said that malnutrition had been recognized as a public disease only after the 2005 crises. He added that before that it was not recognized as a public disease, so there was no treatment in place for children.
The ramping up of WFP operations focuses on reducing malnutrition through general food distributions to 1.5 million people, blanket feeding for children under two years of age and supplementary feeding for children under five in the worst-affected areas.
WFP will also target pregnant women and nursing mothers as well as supporting the provision of cereal banks – community cereal stores where women buy grain at subsidized prices at the height of the ‘lean season’ when the previous harvest has run out. Communities restock the banks during the next harvest when prices are lowest.
WFP has appealed for US$182 million to scale its operations in one of the poorest countries in the world. The current shortfall is US$96 million.
WFP is working against time to provide food assistance as fast as possible, buying most of the needed food from neighbouring countries to significantly shorten the lead time, which is normally about four months, to deliver food to Niger.
Ferrera said that resources were badly needed “now and those funds will be used to purchase cereals in the region that will be delivered to distribution points very fast."
In addition to meeting the food needs of people hit by drought, WFP provides food for meals given to hundreds of thousands of school children in Niger and assists people affected by HIV/Aids and tuberculosis.
Download
There is no media available to download.
