Blog # 6 MAURITANIA: Ravaged by Drought – the Number of Malnourished Children Rises

There are still children facing malnourishment in certain parts of Africa. Because of many droughts in different place, parents have little or no food to feed their children. According to the article it does not rains at all in these small towns, and there is no way harvest can take place. In the article it discusses a mother who lives in the midst of a parched landscape of sand and rocky soil, deep in the Sahel desert. A drought has destroyed the majority of the harvest in the region and has ravaged the country for months, which caused rural populations to start running out of food in early February. Situations like these are extremely severe for small children, especially if certain region were already at risk of hunger. When a nutritionist places a three-colored plastic band around the child’s upper arm, the strip tightens to the red section. This means that the child is severely malnourishment, which is the case for many children in Mauritania and other counties surrounding it.

Twelve million people will soon suffer server food insecurity and hunger in many regions if the problem persists. This is too many people going through the same situation and should create a voice. Many regions in Africa is lack the natural resources they need in order to stay healthy, which is causing families to suffer every day.  Mothers are struggling because they have no food as well as milk to feed their babies. In a normal year half of all the children under five suffer chronic malnutrition in the Sahel. Acute malnutrition among children is consistently above the ten percent threshold that for UNICEF defines an emergency. The majority of people have to go many more months in these circumstances. Moreover, It seem as if they are waiting to die but still fighting for survival. There is completely no help, and there has been no intervention to help solve the problem when crops are being destroyed by drought and many people dying.

http://www.ips.org/africa/2012/02/mauritania-ravaged-by-drought-the-number-of-malnourished-children-rises/