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The Climate Change Crisis No One is Speaking About

Madagascar, Ankao, Ambondro, Ambovombe 11 June 2021 In the photo: Child getting MUACS by WFP staff in Ambovombe, one of the district with a very high level of malnourished children. Photo: WFP/Tsiory Andriantsoarana More than 1.1 million people in southern Madagascar are unable to feed themselves because the country is suffering from its most acute drought in four decades. Ambovombe district is one of the most affected districts and Ankao is among the villages where situation has worsened the most. People there are left with nothing to eat and no means. Malnutrition is raging there since they do not have access to nutritive foods. The lives of children are at stake as nutrition among under-fives deteriorates to alarming levels.

The World Food Program reports successive years of extreme weather events have plunged thousands of people in Madagascar into what WFP officials say is the world’s first climate-induced famine. Five years of consecutive drought compounded by sandstorms, as well as cyclones, an invasion of locusts and growing insecurity have created what World Food Program officials call the perfect storm. The latest U.N. Integrated Food Security Phase Classification or IPC assessment of the food situation in Madagascar found 1.3 million people are suffering from acute hunger. WFP Deputy Country Director in Madagascar, Aduino Mangoni, said an estimated 30,000 people are suffering from famine. He said some people who have sold everything—their land, their cattle, their household goods are leaving their villages behind and migrating toward urban centers in search of help. “Whenever one enters a nutrition center, the situation is heartbreaking, with silence, no joy. Kids just staring at you and in a situation of really skin and bones,” he said. Mangoni said he has worked in several emergencies including Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, in Darfur. He said he has never seen children in such a lamentable condition as these in Madagascar.

SOURCE: VOA

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