WFP triples the number of people receiving free food as famine bites

As famine tightens its grip on impoverished Niger, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday it planned to triple the number of hungry people receiving free food and appealed urgently for US $12 million. WFP said its initial response to the food crisis engulfing the world's second poorest country had been hampered by a slow response from donors. Most of the $4.2 million requested in May to feed 465,000 people had only arrived in the last six weeks, it said. Now WFP is appealing for a further $12 million to distribute free food to 1.2 million people at risk of starvation in the landlocked country. "We have said this before and we are saying it again - Niger needs help today, not tomorrow," said Gian Carlo Cirri, WFP's director in Niger. “Children are dying and adults are going hungry," he added. "The international community cannot allow Niger to live as if cursed by poverty -- we have the means to make a change and we need to mobilise them urgently." Last year, Niger suffered the worst drought in recent memory coupled with a crop-destroying invasion of locusts. Its government reckons that 3.6 million people -- or a quarter of the population in this West African nation -- will go hungry before the next harvest, which is still three months away. Granaries lie empty, while what food there is available at the markets is selling for twice the usual price, putting it beyond reach of many households. With the next harvest not ready until October, some people are surviving on wild leaves and aid agencies operating emergency feeding centres are being overwhelmed by hundreds of malnourished children. The international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says it is treating three times as many malnourished children in Niger as last year. WFP said in its latest emergency bulletin, released on Friday, that MSF was finalising two new nutritional surveys which showed that the situation was getting worse. "Preliminary results indicate an increase in malnutrition among children under five in the areas surveyed. This appears to confirm the widespread impression that the situation is indeed continually deteriorating," the WFP report said. MSF officials in Niamey and Paris were not immediately available to comment. Niger's government is worried that free food distribution might encourage dependency on food aid and distort local markets. Until now it has preferred to subsidise grain sales in the areas of greatest need. WFP stressed that while it planned to triple the number of recipients of free food, the handouts would remain targeted. WFP officials said the agency would focus on giving free food to mothers accompanying their malnourished infants to feeding centres and other vulnerable households. Even in a good year, Niger struggles to feed itself. More than 80 percent of the country's 12 million population rely on subsistence farming and cattle rearing, and the semi-desert terrain is unkind to crops. Everyone is hoping for abundant rainfall this year, so that newly-planted crops will yield a decent harvest, and the spiral of food shortages will be halted. "The indications we're getting are that the rains have started well across the country and if they continue until September we can hope for a good harvest that will enable us to escape this misery," Seidou Bakari, the co-ordinator of the government's food crisis unit, told IRIN by telephone from Niamey. "If not, then it will be a disaster," he warned. "We're on the edge of the Sahara desert so nothing is guaranteed here as far as rain is concerned." Last year's rains began well across the Sahel region of West Africa, but they ended prematurely in many areas of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, giving rise to food shortages across the region.