KALTUNGO, Nigeria (AP) — 9-month-old twins cried constantly and tugged at their mother, looking for food as well as attention. They had received very little food in the last 24 hours, and their heads, which were too large for their tiny bodies, bore deeper signs of hunger.
“There is very little milk coming out,” said their 38-year-old mother, Dorcas Simon, who has three other children and has difficulty breastfeeding. He laughed as if to hide his pain. “What will I give them when I don’t have food?”
In northern Nigeria, where conflict and climate change have long contributed to the problem, twins are among 181 million children under 5 (or 27% of the youngest children in the world) living in severe food poverty, according to a new report published Thursday. UN children’s agency.
Focusing on nearly 100 low- and middle-income countries, the report defines severe food poverty as consuming nothing in a day or, at best, not consuming two of the eight food groups the agency recognizes.
Africa’s population of more than 1.3 billion is one of the most affected by conflicts, climate crises and rising food prices. The continent accounts for a third of the global burden and 13 of the 20 most affected countries.
However, the report stated that some progress had been made.
Stating that the percentage of children living in severe food poverty in West and Central Africa has fallen from 42 percent to 32 percent in the last decade, the report noted improvements including product diversity and performance-based incentives for health workers.
In the absence of vital nutrients, children living on “extremely poor” diets are more likely to suffer from wasting, a life-threatening form of malnutrition, the organization known as UNICEF said.
“When wasting becomes so severe, they are 12 times more likely to die,” Harriet Torlesse, one of the report’s authors, told The Associated Press.
In Nigerian communities like Kaltungo in the northeast, where Simon lives, UNICEF is training thousands of women on how to increase their families’ nutritional intake by growing cassava, sweet potatoes, maize and millet in home gardens.
More than a dozen women gathered in Kaltungo’s Poshereng village this week to learn dozens of recipes that they can prepare when there is no rain, using low-water meals in sand-filled sacks.
Mothers in Nigeria are also facing the country’s worst cost-of-living crisis. Growing food at home saves money.
Aisha Aliyu, a 36-year-old mother of five children, said that her last child “used to be thin, but now they are growing fat at home.” Hauwa Bwami, a 50-year-old mother of five, nearly lost her grandson to kwashiorkor, a disease accompanied by severe protein deficiency, before her UNICEF training began a year ago. She now grows enough food to sell to other women.
Kaltungo is located in a semi-arid agricultural region where climate change has limited rainfall in recent years. Ladi Abdullahi, who educates the women, said that in the past, some children died of acute malnutrition due to food shortages.
Simon, who was with the group for the first time, said the training was “like answered prayers for me.”
But this can be a painful lesson. Another intern, Florence Victor, 59, watched helplessly as her nine-month-old grandson succumbed to malnutrition in 2022.
Malnutrition can also weaken the immune system over time, leaving children vulnerable to lethal diseases.
In the Sahel, the semi-arid region south of the Sahara Desert and a hotspot for violent extremism, there has been an increase in acute malnutrition, which is worse than severe food poverty, reaching emergency levels, senior food security adviser Alfred Ejem said. with the aid group Mercy Corps in Africa.
Ejem said that due to displacement and climate change, families are resorting to “poor coping mechanisms like eating leaves and grasshoppers to survive.”
In conflict-hit Sudan, many children are dying from severe malnutrition.
In Nigeria’s troubled northwest, French health organization Médecins Sans Frontières said at least 850 children died within 24 to 48 hours of being admitted to health facilities last year.
“We are trying to treat patients on mattresses on the floor because our facilities are full,” Simba Tirima, MSF’s representative in Nigeria, said on Tuesday.
Many malnourished children in the area never make it to hospital because they live in remote areas or their families cannot afford the cost of their care.
Inequality also plays a role in severe food poverty among children in Africa, the new report says. In South Africa, the world’s most unequal country, roughly one in four children is affected by severe food poverty, despite being the continent’s most developed country.
Author Torlesse said governments and partners needed to act urgently: “The work begins now.”
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