Smiling Is a Charity Ask

doctorswithoutborders:

Fighting Unusually High Malnutrition Rates in Chad and Preparing for Worse

As a food crisis continues to spread and levels of severe acute malnutrition continue to rise in Chad, MSF is expanding the number of emergency malnutrition treatment programs it is operating in the country. Even in a normal year, Chad has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. This year is showing signs of being worse than usual. In early 2012, in some areas of the country, rates of global acute malnutrition as high as 24 percent have already been reported among children under the age of five.

Why are there such alarming rates of malnutrition in Biltine?

February is the beginning of the hunger gap in Chad, when families traditionally begin to run out of their food stocks. This year MSF found high rates of severe acute malnutrition rates among children under five, because only 46 percent of the harvest required to feed the population was harvested, which is well below the average. Many Chadians who worked in Libya also lost their jobs and returned home. Those men have moved to other parts of Chad to find work, but the salaries are much lower, so they are sending home less money.

A staff member uses a MUAC to check a child for malnutrition at an MSF hospital in Chad.

Chad 2012 © Andrea Bussotti/MSF