Malnutrition

In Niger, the deadly combination of malaria and malnutrition has created a vicious cycle that has a huge impact on some of the country's most vulnerable people.

MSF's Henry Gray explains how Malian refugees are suffering from hunger after fleeing to Mbera camp in Mauritania.

One year after the start of the political crisis in Mali, insecurity has displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

An MSF assessment finds alarming malnutrition rates in many parts of the country, including the outskirts of Mogadishu.

MSF doctor Kalyani Gomathinayagam discusses the situation in Biltine, Chad, where MSF is working to nurse acutely malnourished children back to health.

The harvest is almost in, but MSF continues to admit new patients to its emergency feeding program in eastern Chad.

In this article, originally published on the Huffington Post, MSF pediatrician Susan Shepherd discusses the reduction of childhood mortality in Niger and strategies to reduce it worldwide.

A new study published by PLoS based on MSF's work in Niger shows the impact supplemental feeding programs have during nutrition emergencies.

MSF is treating an influx of patients for malnutrition and malaria in Niger's Maradi region.

A live BBC report from the Batil refugee camp in South Sudan, featuring an interview with MSF staff on the ground.

BBC reports from the refugee camps in South Sudan's Maban County, where more than 100,000 Sudanese men, women, and children are seeking sanctuary after fleeing their homeland.

Helen Ottens-Patterson, an MSF nurse, describes the dire situation in Batil camp, where more than 110,000 Sudanese refugees are struggling to survive.

Sudanese refugees living in appalling conditions in camps in South Sudan are falling ill and dying at rates alarmingly above accepted international standards for emergencies. 

An update about the ongoing refugee crisis in South Sudan's Upper Nile State, from MSF Emergency Coordinator John Tzanos.

Starved for Attention nominated in the "New Approaches to Documentary Programming" Category.

MSF is tackling child malnutrition in the conflict-ravaged Afghan province of Helmand.

MSF nutrition experts Susan Shepherd and Stéphane Doyon discuss the need for long-term solutions to malnutrition in Africa's Sahel region. 

People displaced by conflict are fleeing Mali en masse—and settling in places already weakened by food insecurity.

"All these people in the camps are normal people who had normal lives. They’re not rich people, but they had houses and clothes, and then one day, they had to pack their things, leave their lives behind and start to walk. For weeks on end." 

Emma Augustine Zoba, an MSF medical team leader in Chad, discusses the growing malnutrition crisis in the country and MSF's widening response efforts.

As a food crisis spreads and malnutrition levels continue to rise, MSF is expanding the number of emergency malnutrition treatment programs it is operating in the country. 

Refugees from the West African country of Mali face insufficient levels of assistance in camps rife with disease and malnutrition where the looming rainy season will further complicate the deployment of aid. 

Despite the growing complexity of an already unstable situation in North Kivu, MSF continues to provide primary and secondary health care to the population. 

Food and water shortages in Chad are exacerbating malnutrition and contributing to the spread of deadly diseases like measles and meningitis.

This update details MSF's recent activities in Africa's Sahel region, where widespread malnutrition and water shortages are exacerbating the outbreaks of diseases like meningitis.

This document gives an overview of MSF activities related to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia and neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia. The data presented, though provisional, account for MSF’s medical activities and financial income and expenditures in this region, while the narrative illustrates how MSF as a medical aid organization responded to this evolving crisis. 

A food crisis has been declared in the Sahelian Band of West Africa. UNICEF estimates that up to 15 million people in six countries in the Sahel region are living with moderate or acute food insecurity.

Severe acute malnutrition in parts of Chad has reached emergency levels, requiring immediate life-saving interventions.

Kirrily de Polnay, an MSF doctor working in South Sudan's Jamam refugee camps talks about the situation, the patients, and the nature of working in fast evolving emergency.

Measles is sweeping unchecked through parts of southern Somalia, where MSF is still waiting for permission from authorities to conduct a vaccination campaign.

More than 28,000 Malian refugees fleeing conflict in northern Mali have been forced to seek refuge in Mauritania.

José Luis Dvorzak, an MSF doctor, describes his experiences in Ethiopia's Liben refugee camps, and calls attention to the ongoing plight of Somali refugees.

Four-year-old Khalif's uncle brought him 37 miles to Kismayo to receive treatment at MSF's inpatient therapeutic feeding center.

These testimonies from Somali refugees in southern Ethiopia describe the violence that drove them from their homes and the challenges they face in the refugee camps they've settled in. 

People living in tribal villages in central India are caught up in the conflict between Maoist rebels and government forces. Dr. Rebecca Cuthbert describes how MSF takes the clinics to them.

MSF is scaling up its response in South Sudan to an influx of refugees and working to prevent malnourishment in the face of a possible food shortage in Northern Bahr al Ghazal State.

MSF has released a list of important stories that had an impact on people’s ability to access needed drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines in developing countries in 2011.

Through its Access Campaign, MSF has been closely following the developments in the world of access to medicines, vaccines, and diagnostics.

Follow Dr. Frédérique Eygonnet through one day at MSF's Paoua hospital, the only hospital serving the approximately 120,000 residents of this subprefecture in the Central African Republic.

Robert Mungai Maina, MSF clinical officer, discusses the situation in Doro refugee camp.

This testimony from a 33-year-old refugee in the Doro camp in South Sudan describes the hardships he and his family have faced since arriving in the overcrowded camp.

A measles epidemic is spreading. The lack of infrastructure and services is worsening the population’s vulnerability. And civilians have endured new military offensives.

Throughout the summer, waves of Somalis set out on desperate, arduous journeys, braving desert heat, hunger, and bandits to seek relief from a catastrophe remarkable even by the standards of this long-troubled country.

In Niger, the stretch from June to October is known as the “lean season,” a time during which the country faces recurrent and often severe food and nutritional crises.

This fall, MSF-USA traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, to stage “Starved for Attention,” a free interactive exhibit designed to raise awareness about the global crisis of childhood malnutrition.

The financial transaction tax proposed by France and Germany could help save millions of lives if a percentage were allocated to global health, MSF said today.

Despite some recent gains in the fight against childhood malnutrition, the global food aid system largely continues to provide substandard foods to millions of malnourished children.

To the extent possible given the conditions, MSF is battling cholera and measles outbreaks in and around the town of Marere in southern Somalia

MSF and VII Photo have launched a four-city tour of "Starved for Attention," a free interactive, multimedia exhibit in which some of the world's top photojournalists highlight the global crisis of malnutrition.

The hospital in Galcaayo North, which is partly supported by MSF, has treated 60 wounded, most of them civilians, while another 20 wounded were treated at an MSF-run hospital in the southern part of the city.

Restrictions and security concerns continue to hinder MSF's attempts to reach the most vulnerable populations in Somalia.

Dr. Faiza Adan Abdirahman, the medical doctor in charge of the pediatric department at Istarlin hospital in Galgaduud, discusses the situation in the area.

As the number of malnourished children continues to rise, it is clear that more assistance is necessary for the already vulnerable Somali population.

Duncan McLean, MSF program manager for Somalia, talks about the difficulties of working in Somalia today.

An interview with Hussein Sheikh Qassim is the Medical Activities Manager in the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Marere, southern Somalia.

MSF staff recently returned from Mogadishu discuss what they saw there and the issues the humanitarian response to the ongoing crisis must address.

Nearly 120,000 Somali refugees are now taking shelter in Ethiopia's Liben region, in camps originally built to house less than half their number.

MSF teams working in Marere, in southern Somalia, are distributing relief items to thousands of displaced Somalis who have found temporary shelter in the nearby town of Jilib.

Watch ABC News Correspondent David Muir as he makes his way to Dadaab refugee camp and visits the MSF intensive care unit where MSF staff are treating severely malnourished children.

MSF is deeply concerned by the relocation of Somali refugees in Dadaab to the Ifo 3 camp, a move marked by a pronounced lack of transparency, planning, and consultation.

"What is new is that people are now fleeing the rural areas simply because they have no more food to eat.”

Malnutrition is of the biggest dangers for the Lower Juba region's eight million people. In the town of Marere, MSF runs the only hospital in southern Somalia that offers free medical care.

The average in the villages where MSF screened children for malnutrition was 23 percent; one village in Lapur division had a 37 percent rate of global acute malnutrition.

Dr. Hussein Sheikh Qassim, MSF Medical Coordinator in Marere, southern Somalia, describes how violence and drought are driving people from their homes in search of care and shelter.

MSF has found alarmingly high rates of malnutrition among the Somali refugees arriving and settling on the outskirts of the Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. 

As a food crisis worsens and conflict continues, many people inside Somalia, and in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, urgently need assistance.

As South Sudan prepares to mark its official independence on July 9, an estimated 260,000 newly displaced people continue to face emergency needs.

The U.S. government must supply malnourished children overseas with the same quality of nutritious foods as it currently provides for low-income American families, says Dr. Susan Shepherd.

Nenna Arnold, a community outreach nurse at the Dagahaley refugee camp in northeastern Kenya, cares for Somali refugees fleeing violence, insecurity, and a devastating drough.

Dr. Gedi Mohamed, director of the general hospital at Dagahaley refugee camp, in northeastern Kenya, describes what brought him to Dadaab and how MSF is coping with the severely overcrowded conditions.

Crowded into camps built to house 90,000 people that are now "home" to more than 300,000, Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya, urgently need additional assistance and more shelter.

In an MSF study, mortality rates were observed to be 50 percent lower among young children in Niger who received highly nutritious supplemental food.

A longtime MSF staff member and native of southern Sudan gives his impressions of the region after its people voted overwhelmingly for independence.

Despite an aggressive response to the nutritional crisis in Niger by MSF and other organizations, tens of thousands of children suffered from malnutrition in 2010.

Even a quick glance at Doctors Without Borders/Médecins San Frontières (MSF) updates from Somalia over the past two years shows that the country’s conflict remains as relentless as ever. February 25, 2009: “121 wounded in 24 hours”; June 2, 2009: “218 treated over two weeks”; January 20, 2010: “111 wounded in 3-day period”: February 3, 2010: 89 treated, including 66 women and children, in Mogadishu.

At first, the flooding that began this past July in Pakistan was said to have affected tens of thousands of people in the northeast. Then the water began to spread south and west and the numbers grew. Hundreds of thousands were impacted, it was reported, then one million, then five million, then ten. Eventually, the number of people whose lives were uprooted reached an astonishing 20 million in all four of Pakistan’s provinces—Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Balochistan, Punjab, and Sindh—as well as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Kashmir.
 

While the focus now on the political situation in southern Sudan, the region remains in the midst of a humanitarian and medical crisis,

Through its Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines, MSF has been closely following the developments in the world of access to medicines, vaccines and diagnostics.

Malaria is particularly dangerous for malnourished children, and the cases of malaria are flaring right now during Niger's rainy season; MSF has treated nearly 130,000 children already.

The world’s top food aid donors continue to supply and finance nutritionally substandard foods to developing countries, despite conclusive evidence of their ineffectiveness in reducing childhood malnutrition.

An open letter from Sophie Delaunay, Executive Director of MSF-USA, urging the U.S. to stop supplying nutritionally substandard food to malnourished children in developing countries.

In the world's fastest growing city, on the banks of a perilously polluted river, MSF runs a primary health care center that provides care to children under five and pregnant and lactating women.

Instead of reviving the dry landscape and arid fields, torrential rains washed away many of the newly planted crops in parts of Chad.

“Starved for Attention” aims to rewrite the story of malnutrition through a series of multimedia documentaries that seamlessly blend photography and video from some of the most accomplished and award-winning photojournalists working today. This slideshow gives you a sample of the striking images they captured.

Inside an MSF outpatient clinic for malnourished children in northeast India, Dr. Krishna Ashvalayan is trying fervently to convince a mother to keep her severely malnourished 12-month-old girl in MSF’s nutrition program. The girl’s mother, Sela, however, is adamant; she wants her daughter’s name taken off the clinic’s list of patients.

In this issue of Alert, we focus on the neglected crisis of childhood malnutrition. Last year alone, MSF treated more than a quarter of a million malnourished children in 34 countries.

New York, September 28, 2010 – Country contributions to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria (GFATM)—to be announced at next week’s donor replenishment meeting in New York—are expected to fall far short of the $20 billion needed for the Fund to maintain and expand its grant programs.

MSF Teleconference on Innovative Financing Mechanisms for Global Health, conducted September 20, 2010

The fight against childhood malnutrition and HIV could be transformed by innovative funding mechanisms currently tabled at UN Millennium Development Goals Summit.

The food crisis in the Sahel region of Africa has caused widespread malnutrition, particularly among children.

In Niger more than two million children are entering the peak of what authorities say is a particularly devastating hunger season causing a severe risk of malnutrition-related fatalities.
 

MSF and its local partners have treated 77,000 severely malnourished children in Niger this year and are distributing food supplements to 143,000 young children. To address a recurrent nutritional crisis, prevention is crucial.

“Children become malnourished or even severely malnourished due to the lack of food, clean water, and a place to stay,” said MSF nurse Abdul Wasay.

Like most tales of great invention, the story of Plumpy’nut begins with a eureka moment, in this case involving a French doctor and a jar of Nutella, and proceeds through the stages of rejection, acceptance, evangelization and mass production. The product may not look like much — a little foil packet filled with a soft, sticky substance — but its advocates are prone to use the language of magic and wonders. What is Plumpy’nut? Sound it out, and you get the idea: it’s an edible paste made of peanuts, packed with calories and vitamins, that is specially formulated to renourish starving children.

Intense floods have hit parts of Chad, a country already enduring a severe malnuturition crisis.

Get the free Starved For Attention action kit and host a screening event in your community!

MSF has been providing care to more than 30,000 Somali Refugees in Ethiopia's Liben zone since February 2009.

"Unfortunately, we are witnessing recurrent crises that vary only by intensity from year to year."

Moses Chol, an MSF emergency coordinator in Southern Sudan, speaks about the country's high incidence of malnutrition and MSF's efforts to provide more nutritional aid to those in need.

Need to Know takes a closer look at how the U.S. food aid system is part of the problem in combating childhood malnutrition.

Every six seconds worldwide, a child dies from malnutrition. Despite this alarming fact, childhood malnutrition remains under-documented and fundamentally misunderstood, reports Doctors Without Borders. To draw attention to the crisis, they called upon experienced photojournalists to visit seven countries, from war zones to impoverished regions to emerging economies, to create the multimedia series “Starved for Attention.”

The picture of starvation in Africa is one we think we know. “We tend to think of it as a lonely child in the middle of nowhere with a vulture hanging over her,” Marcus Bleasdale said. “It’s not like that at all. There is a very concerned family. Hundreds of doctors go into making these children well again.”

With Niger once again in the grips of a nutritional crisis, MSF is hurrying to care for the most vulnerable members of the population.

In Niger, MSF is working with communities to identify and treat childhood malnutrition earlier.

Toronto/Geneva, June 22, 2010: World leaders meeting at the G8 and G20 summits will not succeed in improving mother and child health in the developing world unless they fundamentally change how they address malnutrition and establish new sustainable funding sources to combat this treatable and preventable condition, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said today.

Geneva/New York, June 14, 2010 – People living in the Sahelian belt of Chad are facing one of the worst nutrition crises in recent years. The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is calling for a faster and larger deployment of humanitarian assistance to meet the needs of the most vulnerable populations, particularly children under the age of five.

The food situation is serious throughout the Chadian Sahel strip as a result of two years of drought, swarms of locusts, a lack of drinking water and no access to care.

NEW YORK, JUNE 2, 2010 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the VII Photo agency today launched “Starved for Attention,” a global multimedia campaign presenting a unique and new perspective of childhood malnutrition, a preventable and treatable condition that nonetheless claims the lives of millions of children each year. 

It is the only prison in Ituri, built for 100 or so prisoners, but housing five times more. The prison is dilapidated, but worse, until recently it has been a place where many prisoners die from hunger.

“This is the highest number of malnourished children MSF has ever treated in the area. What’s more, we are concerned that not everyone is able to reach us. What we see in our program may just be a fraction of a wider crisis," says MSF’s head of mission for Somalia.

As the World Food Summit draws to a close, the international community once again provides no commitments on tackling childhood malnutrition. World leaders have also failed to commit funds to directly target the malnutrition problem, despite pledges of US $20 billion to support food security made at the l’Aquila G8 meeting earlier this year.

Rome/New York, November 11, 2009 – Funding by rich countries to combat malnutrition has remained flat for seven years, according to a report released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). This barely accounts for three percent of the funds needed to reduce the 3.5 to 5 million annual deaths of children under five attributed to malnutrition.

Malnutrition is an urgent humanitarian emergency that contributes to the deaths of 3.5 to 5 million children under five each year. Millions more are left vulnerable to illnesses or suffering from physical or mental disabilities due to malnutrition. This in turn contributes to impediments to education and development in affected countries.

The southwestern area of Central African Republic (CAR) continues to face a severe nutritional emergency. In September, after being alerted by local authorities, MSF medical teams opened four feeding centers in Carnot, Boda, Nola, and Gamboula. Teams also implemented a number of outpatient treatment programs. Three months later, staff have treated more than 4,000 children. Clara Delacre, MSF emergency coordinator in Boda and Nola, explains the situation on the ground.

Barcelona/Paris/New York, September 22, 2009 – The south-western area of the Central African Republic (CAR) is facing a severe nutritional emergency, with more than 1,000 children at grave risk, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today.

Carol Calero is a field physician for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Currently she is working in the nutritional emergency in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR). In this interview, she talks about being in the heart of a health emergency and of the positive cases that keeps her spirits up.

We brought therapeutic foods, milk, medicines and logistical supplies, such as tents, because we had no idea what we would find there. When we arrived, the hospital team greeted us warmly. They seemed very relieved to see us. We got to work the next morning.

On July 23, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) opened a malnutrition treatment program in Carnot, a city in southwestern Central African Republic (CAR). Almost 400 severely malnourished children have already been admitted.

In July, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began an intervention in Kwekwe prison in Zimbabwe’s central Midlands Province. The intervention focuses on providing basic health care and therapeutic feeding to the inmates, many of whom are severely malnourished.

During the rainy season, which would coincide with the hunger gap—the time just before the next harvest when food stocks dwindle—we would treat more than 1,200 severely and moderately malnourished children every week. Because of this great need, we refused to allow anything to interfere with our activities.

As intense violence once again rocks Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, teams from Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) continue working throughout the country to provide lifesaving medical care.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) presents further evidence that adequate food supplements are needed as early intervention to avert widespread malnutrition in young children.

Following recent outbreaks of violence between rival ethnic groups in Jonglei State, Southern Sudan, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams are treating wounded from each side, assisting those who fled their villages, and treating malnutrition and cholera.

Ready-to-use food supplements (RUFs) can significantly reduce rates of the deadliest forms of malnutrition, according to the results of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on January 21. The study took place in Niger in 2006 and 2007 during the period between harvests when children are most vulnerable to malnutrition and showed that children given RUFs in addition to their normal diet were 60 percent less likely to progress to the severe stages of malnutrition than those who were not given the supplements. MSF began using this preventative strategy in its projects in 2007.

More than 23,440 children have been treated, and 88 percent cured since MSF launched a nutrition program in Burkina Faso in September 2007. The majority of patients were treated with nutrient-rich, therapeutic ready-to-use food (RUF).

About 560,000 inhabitants of Kirundo province in northern Burundi, most of whom are farmers, are facing a food crisis. More and more children are suffering from malnutrition due to the shortage of food. Thousands of inhabitants are believed to have fled to Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania, all in search of food. MSF launched an emergency intervention in the province on February 4

Doctors Without Borders promotes a campaign to raise global awareness about the scourge that is childhood malnutrition, which affects some 55 million children under five.

Harare/Johannesburg/New York, February 17, 2009 —Zimbabwe's humanitarian crisis continues to rapidly deteriorate, causing appalling suffering, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned today. The organization’s medical teams have now treated almost 45,000 people for cholera, an estimated 75 percent of the total number of cases in the current outbreak, and the crisis is far from over.

While the global prices for basic commodities like flour, milk, and corn have fallen back to the levels of end 2006, deaths and crippling lifelong handicaps caused by malnutrition have not decreased in the most affected countries where malnutrition is a recurrent, seasonal phenomenon with only very limited links to global food price developments. The reason lies in the specific needs of very young children for a diverse and nutrient-rich diet.

Madrid, January 23, 2009–If next week’s Madrid Food Summit does not come up with a concrete implementation and funding plan focused on malnutrition, 55 million children under five will continue to face potential life-threatening malnutrition according to ACF International and MSF.

On January 21, 2009, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the results of a study on the preventive distribution of ready-to-use (RUF) therapeutic food products. This 2006 study, which was conducted in Niger, showed that the number of children who progress to severe malnutrition can be cut in half. These effective preventive strategies must be developed in areas where severe malnutrition strikes tens of thousands of children and is a major cause of death, explains Dr. Isabelle Defourny, MSF’s program manager for Niger.

New York, NY, January 21, 2009 — According to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), children in rural Niger who received ready-to-use food in addition to their normal diet were nearly 60 percent less likely to progress to the most life-threatening form of malnutrition than children whose diets were not supplemented.

Food riots around the world early in 2008 brought into sharp relief the impact of rising food prices on communities as far as apart as Haiti, Bangladesh, and Ivory Coast. Less visible, though more deadly and pervasive, was the ongoing crisis in childhood malnutrition. While combating hunger depends on having access to food in sufficient quantity, conquering malnutrition also means assuring foods of adequate nutritional quality. For young, malnourished children, foods rich in nutrients, vitamins, and minerals are essential to survival and development.

Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported today in its annual list of the “Top Ten” humanitarian crises.

Without access to a wide range of essential nutrients, 9 children will continue to die every minute of causes related to malnutrition. MSF calls for food aid to change and for a nutrient rich diet to be made available to children to save millions of young lives.

MSF's assessments of Haiti's nutritional situation have revealed small pockets of malnourished children, consistent with levels of chronic undernutrition found in the country before the recent hurricanes. However, none have shown high levels of malnutrition requiring a major scale-up of MSF’s nutritional programs.

Some of the world’s leading photojournalists worked alongside our medical teams throughout 2008, documenting our work and following the lives of our patients and their communities. At the same time, some of our own staff captured unforgettable moments that we are pleased to include in this Year in Pictures issue of Alert, which brings together some of the most moving and telling photographs of the crises to which we responded in 2008.

MSF medical teams are currently assessing the nutritional situation in several areas of the country. Since November 4, MSF medical doctors have been screening children in the mountain area of Baie d'Orange and Belle Anse, where authorities had reported children dead because of malnutrition in the previous weeks.

In May, MSF emergency teams found extremely high numbers of children under age five who were severely malnourished in southern Ethiopia. By May 13, MSF had begun an emergency nutritional intervention that continued to grow along with the increasing numbers of patients.

Paris/Niamey, Niger October 30, 2008 – On July 18, 2008, the Niger government, suddenly and without explanation, terminated the medical and nutritional activities of the French section of the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in the Maradi region of Niger. This decision has had grave consequences on mortality among young children.

Paris/Niamey, October 21, 2008 — Three months after Nigerien authorities suspended the activities of the French section of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international medical humanitarian organization is calling for an immediate resumption of its nutritional operations in the Maradi region.

Press Teleconference: Nicolas de Torrenté, executive director of MSF-USA and Marie Pierre Allié, president of the French section of MSF, discussed the organization’s suspension from treating malnutrition in the Maradi region of Niger.

Malnutrition is often lost in discussions around the subject of hunger, especially in the context of the discourse to "end world hunger," or to "feed the world." These blurred definitions help perpetuate the inadequate response to malnutrition.

Geneva, October 6, 2008 — After decades of neglect and poor standards for nutrition programs, the international nutrition community has put forth a clear set of principles to reduce deaths in moderately malnourished children. These new standards could positively impact 55 million moderately malnourished children worldwide, but only if they are translated into more effective food programs.

Between 2001 and 2005, the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) therapeutic feeding programme in Maradi, Niger
offered treatment for severe acute malnutrition centred on the use of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) and the outpatient management of all uncomplicated cases.

September 29, 2008, Geneva — A World Health Organization meeting to develop new recommendations for the treatment of malnutrition will have a far-reaching impact on the quality of food aid and nutrition programs for infants and young children, according to the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

At present, the situation seems to be stabilizing in some of these areas and admissions of severe cases into the MSF centers are decreasing. However, it is not possible to identify a general trend across the country.

In September 2008, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières and Columbia University's Institute of Human Nutrition will convene a meeting of lead national and international organizations and experts to review recent successes and examine how international nutrition and food aid programming can more effectively address the crisis of malnutrition in high burden regions. At a time of rising food prices and food insecurity, the need to scale up efforts to prevent the deaths, illness and disability caused by malnutrition every year is even more urgent.

New York, NY, September 11, 2008—Hundreds of international food aid and nutrition experts, representatives from donor institutions and aid organizations, and political leaders, gathered in New York today to try to better tackle the scourge of global childhood malnutrition—a neglected crisis that contributes to the unnecessary deaths of 3.5 to five million children under five every year and leaves millions more with life-long disabilities.

Nearly 40,000 people have received food distributions through MSF nutrition activities in southern Ethiopia over the last four months. Although harvest time has arrived in some areas and is close in others, hungry crowds still gather at the entrance of the centers.

More than 16,700 severely malnourished patients, mostly children, have been cared for in MSF programs in the Oromiya and Southern Nations and Nationalities People's (SNNP) regions of southern Ethiopia.

“One of my children died because we had nothing to eat at home. Today, I am coming to MSF in Tunto to see if my other child can be admitted into the outreach therapeutic program."

"We’ve already admitted more than 100 patients this morning, but a lot of people don’t meet the admission criteria and don’t understand why they’ll receive nothing when they have nothing.”

by Susan Shepherd, MD
Nutrition Advisor
Access Campaign for Essential Medicines

For 21 years, the south of Sudan was the country’s hotbed of conflict, until a peace agreement was signed in 2005. However, the emergency is far from over.

MSF nurse Clara Delacre recently returned from northeastern Uganda, where she had been working in a nutritional program in Kaabong district, Karamoja region. Here, she talks about the program and about how MSF responds to malnutrition.

MSF has treated 11,800 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in the Oromiya and SNNP regions of southern Ethiopia since mid-May. In certain areas, poor rainfall, high food prices, low purchasing power and other factors have led to an alarming situation.

On May 20, MSF set up a stabilization center in the Shashemene region of southern Ethiopia to provide 24-hour medical care to children with complicated severe malnutrition—those at highest risk of dying who are suffering from additional conditions such as dehydration or malaria. Within days, the center had admitted over 200 children. Here, their caretakers describe the difficulties of the last few months.

Tokyo/New York, July 3, 2008 –The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today called on G8 leaders who will gather next week in Japan to take bold decisions to adequately finance food aid and nutrition programs directed at young children.

Since May 13, MSF has been continually scaling up its activities in areas of southern Ethiopia to respond to the alarming nutritional situation there.

Geneva/Nairobi, June 26, 2008 — The people of Somalia are currently facing a massive humanitarian crisis with unmet critical medical needs. In May alone, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams working in the Mogadishu suburbs of Hawa Abdi and Afgooye treated more than 2,500 children suffering from acute malnutrition with admissions to MSF nutritional programs doubling in April and doubling again in May.

Press Teleconference: Nicolas de Torrente, executive director of MSF-USA, Benoit Leduc, MSF operations manager for Somalia, and Dr. Greg Elder, MSF deputy operations manager, discuss the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Somalia.

Since MSF started its intervention in the Oromiya region on May 13, more than 700 children with complicated severe malnutrition have been admitted to its three inpatient centers in Shashemene, Ropi, and Senbete Shinquille. MSF is treating more than 1,500 who are not suffering from complications, such as severe dehydration or malaria, on an outpatient basis in eight different clinics around the region.

Rome/New York, June 2, 2008 – As heads-of-state and nearly 20 key United Nations officials meet in Rome this week to design a plan to tackle the current global food crisis, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is urging the adoption and rapid scale-up of specific nutritional strategies that target children under two years of age.

Two weeks ago, MSF launched a nutritional intervention in some areas of the southern region of Oromiya in Ethiopia, following assessments that showed alarming levels of malnutrition among children under five.

Before the High Level task force communicates its first Comprehensive Framework for Action, Médecins Sans Frontières urges careful consideration of the population that is most vulnerable to the dire consequences of malnutrition – children under two.

New York/Geneva, April 23, 2008 – As food aid is mobilized in response to the global food price crisis, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warns that sending adult food to feed young children will not save them from the risk of malnutrition. Today MSF urged donors to ensure their aid includes special foods for young children.

By Nicolas de Torrente
Executive Director
Doctors Without Borders U.S.A.

In southern Sudan, thousands of families displaced by the recent armed conflict in the oil-rich region of Abyei are in need of emergency assistance. This is occurring in a region where resources are already extremely depleted.

India's tiger economy is the envy of many — the eight-lane highways, shopping malls, the luxury cars and the growing affluence of the middle class are all evidence of the country’s growing economic clout. Yet, this success masks a very different reality for most of the country’s population. South Asia is one of the world’s malnutrition ‘hot spots,’ and in particular India carries the largest burden of illness in the region. One half of India's children under five are underweight. So what lies behind these grim figures, and what efforts are being made to address the crisis? From New Delhi, Leena Menghaney of MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines outlines some of the main issues defining the debate.

By Susan Shepherd
The New York Times

London/New York, January 16, 2008 – A series on maternal and child undernutrition in the current issue of the medical journal The Lancet, correctly puts the spotlight on nutrition as “a desperately neglected aspect of maternal, newborn, and child health.” However, because of weaknesses in analysis and outmoded recommendations the series is undermining efforts to promote urgently needed change.

New York, December 20, 2007 — People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

New York, October 10, 2007 – The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today called for increased and expanded use of nutrient dense ready-to-use food (RUF) to reduce the five million annual deaths worldwide related to malnutrition in children under five years of age. Current food aid, which focuses on fighting hunger—not on treating malnutrition—is not doing enough to address the needs of young children most at risk, MSF warned.

Thank you everyone, for joining us today. I'd like to welcome you to the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, press teleconference titled: Food is Not Enough. Today, six days before World Food Day, Doctors Without Borders offices worldwide are issuing a call for increased and expanded use of new and revolutionary ready-to-use therapeutic foods, ideal for treating childhood malnutrition.

The Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team in Masisi in the Democratic Republic of Congo's North Kivu province is comprised of 100 Congolese and 5 international staff, works in the 120-bed hospital and a health center. They offer surgical care to war-wounded, as well as general health care and nutritional support to displaced people and the local population. Anne Khoudiacoff, 29, is a Belgian nurse who arrived in DRC in early October. Here she describes her work.

Yaoundé/Geneva, July 31, 2007 – Mortality rates and the medical and nutritional situation among the refugees that have been entering Cameroon for over a year have exceeded emergency thresholds. In response to this situation, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has begun targeted food distribution to meet the vital needs of this vulnerable population. Now more than ever, it is essential for humanitarian actors to mobilize as quickly as possible.

Dr. Shepherd, a pediatrician, explains MSF's strategy to combat outbreaks of acute malnutrition in the country. Each year, tens of thousands of children, aged six months to three years, become acutely malnourished between June and October, the time period that corresponds to depletion of food stocks before the next harvest.

On April 17, 2007 MSF launched an emergency medical response in Afgooye, Lower Shabelle Region, about 30 kilometers west of Mogadishu. Due to insecurity in the area, MSF decided to dispatch a team of senior MSF Somali staff from Nairobi and the Dinsor Health Center to evaluate the needs of thousands of displaced people who poured into the town following major fighting in Mogadishu.

New York, January 9, 2007 — The staggering human toll taken by tuberculosis and malnutrition as well as the devastation caused by wars in the Central African Republic (CAR), Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are among the "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006, according to the year-end list released today by the international humanitarian medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The ninth annual list also highlights the lack of media attention paid to the plight of people affected by the consequences of conflict in Haiti, Somalia, Colombia, Chechnya, and central India.

Every day, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mobile teams criss-cross Niger's rural areas in search ofacutely malnourished children. The number of children treated in MSF's therapeutic feeding programs is growing steadily—more than 50,000 so far this year. The following account describes a typical workday for one of MSF's nutritional programs, based near Zinder, Niger's second-largest city.

On September 1, 2006, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) had more than 10,000 acutely malnourished children currently on treatment in its nutritional program in the Maradi region. Dr. Isabelle Defourny, who has just returned from Niger, offers an assessment of the nutritional situation in the country.

In the first quarter of 2006, MSF treated more than 26,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition in the Maradi region of Niger. As of late June, the beginning of the most critical period, more than 2,000 children are being admitted every week. Last year, the seriousness of the situation forced MSF to launch an emergency program to strengthen the malnutrition treatment program underway since 2001.

Geneva, June 14, 2006 — The last two weeks have seen a sharp increase in admissions of patients suffering from severe malnutrition in the town of Dinsor, in Somalia's Bay Region. Despite recent rains that remain promising for the July harvest and that have eased access of villagers and cattle to water, a growing number of children are continuing to suffer from lack of food. A therapeutic feeding program run by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in its health center in Dinsor has admitted more than 600 patients since the beginning of 2006, ten times more than during the same period last year.

In the Maradi region of Niger, MSF feeding centers have admitted approximately 1,000 children since mid-March. This is a very high number considering it is two months before the usual peak of acute malnutrition. Emmanuel Drouhin, head of MSF’s programs in Maradi describes the current situation.

In the past week, MSF has conducted nutritional surveys in three camps for displaced Congolese around the town of Dubie, near Lake Mweru, in Katanga province, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The results are staggering, with the prevalence of global malnutrition at 19.2 percent and of severe acute malnutrition at 5 percent.

In 2005, MSF teams admitted more than 63,000 children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition to their therapeutic feeding programs in five regions of Niger. This is a chronic emergency situation for which there is a simple, effective answer that targets acute malnutrition.

From July 2005 to January 2006, medical teams from MSF treated nearly 13,000 severely malnourished children at one stabilization center and 12 outpatient therapeutic feeding sites in the northern Nigerian state of Katsina.

By Milton Tectonidis, M.D.

Between January and November 2005, MSF admitted nearly 60,000 severely malnourished children to its therapeutic feeding centers in Niger. While the severe malnutrition epidemic is slowly decreasing, the current situation and the outlook for 2006 remain troubling. Johanne Sekkenes, MSF Head of Mission in Niger, provides an update on the situation.

Despite increasing media coverage over the past months and the announced mobilization of international aid, the crisis is far from over in Niger. In the Zinder region, the number of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition admitted in MSF therapeutic feeding centers is not decreasing and free food distributions are far from addressing the needs of the most destitute families.

In Niger, the number of children suffering from severe malnutrition in Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) therapeutic feeding centers remains at its highest level. Thierry Allafort-Duverger, head of MSF's emergency desk, reflects on a nutritional crisis, which is far from over.

Zinder, Niger, September 13, 2005 – Tens of thousands of children in Niger still require immediate nutritional assistance, according to the international medical aid agency Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). A nutritional and retrospective mortality survey conducted by the group and its research affiliate, Epicentre, in the Zinder region this past August found one in five children suffering from malnutrition. The study revealed an even more critical situation for children less than 30 months old, with nearly one in three malnourished and 5.6% severely malnourished. Just last week, MSF medical teams admitted nearly 1,000 severely malnourished children for treatment in Zinder alone.

Paris/Niamey, August 22, 2005 - Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) warned today that recently begun food distributions in Niger are not reaching those with the greatest needs, especially children under five years of age in the worst-affected areas. MSF calls on United Nations' Secretary General Kofi Annan to take measures to ensure that UN agencies like the World Food Program (WFP) and UNICEF distribute aid according to the real needs of people.

Habiba Souleymane (her name has been changed to protect her confidentiality) has just received a food ration at the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) ambulatory feeding center in Chare Zamna, which is located west of Zinder, Niger.

Between January 1 and the beginning of August 2005, MSF admitted 16,000 severely malnourished children to the feeding centers. The rhythm of admissions has accelerated, with an average of 1,000 children entering the feeding centers per week since the month of June, increasing to 1,600 per week at the end of July.

Dr. Milton Tectonidis, nutritional specialist for MSF, just returned from one month in Maradi, Tahoua, Aguie, and explains how home-based, outpatient care has allowed MSF to treat many more children.

Following an outbreak of measles in Borno state, northern Nigeria, in March 2005, MSF conducted an emergency intervention. While the number of measles cases decreased, the nutritional status in the area was found to be of great concern, notably among small children.

Dr. Sylvaine Blanty, a general practitioner, has been working at the MSF therapeutic feeding center for severely malnourished children in Aguié, Niger, for a month. Before coming to Niger, she had already worked with MSF in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). She writes about her experience over the last month.

On June 27, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) opened its fifth therapeutic feeding center in Niger. This one has 150 hospital beds but two weeks later, it was already full. To respond to the influx of children suffering from severe malnutrition, the number of beds had to be doubled.

In Niger, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is operating in the regions of Maradi and Tahoua where MSF has treated over 12,000 children suffering from severe malnutrition and is bringing food to children suffering from moderate malnutrition. To successfully carry out its projects, MSF has mobilized 50 international aid workers and 450 locally hired staff.

In addition to treatment programs for children suffering from severe malnutrition in Maradi, Niger, MSF made the decision to provide food aid to 25,000 children in the Maradi region suffering from moderate malnutrition in order to protect them from slipping into a severe state of malnutrition.

June 28, 2005, Niamey/New York – Tens of thousands of children are suffering from severe malnutrition in Niger today, many in grave condition and in danger of dying unless they receive urgent medical care, according to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). A recent nutritional survey by MSF and its research affiliate, Epicentre, in the villages to the north of Maradi and Tahoua, found mortality rates for children under five years of age above the emergency threshold of 2 deaths/10,000 people/day for the past two months.

The first warning about Niger's nutritional situation was sounded in October 2004. However, by late June, the international aid system was still unable to deliver appropriate assistance to those at greatest risk. In simple terms, this means a death sentence for the children of Niger's poorest families.

New York/Paris, June 9, 2005 - In response to the nutritional crisis in Niger, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has more than tripled its capacity to treat severely malnourished children. Immediate provision of food aid is the only way to avoid a life threatening situation for thousands of already malnourished children.

Severely malnourished children from the southern areas of Niger are entering MSF's therapeutic feeding centers at an alarming rate.

After having vaccinated more than 40,000 children in the Bousso district, 186 miles south of N'Djamena, MSF medical teams have now joined their colleagues in the capital of Chad.

New York/Niamey, April 26, 2005 - In the face of increasing severe malnutrition in Niger, the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is significantly increasing its ability to provide assistance to people in the most affected regions. The number of malnourished children treated by MSF teams has reached unusually high levels for this period of the year, and an already alarming situation is rapidly worsening. MSF calls upon other agencies to mobilize.

In Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) program in Maradi in southern Niger, the number of children arriving with severe malnutrition continues to climb.

Robert Levin, MD, a family physician from Minneapolis, Minnesota, returned recently from a six-month mission in Lira, a town in northern Uganda, where he treated malnourished children admitted to a therapeutic feeding center operated by MSF.

New York, April 28, 2004 - Because of the lack of appropriate, urgently needed aid, the health of displaced people in Sudan's Darfur region - particularly children - is radically worsening, according to the international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

New York, March 10, 2004 - The international medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has found alarming nutritional needs in the war-affected town of Garsilla, in the Darfur region of western Sudan. In the course of vaccinating more than 4,900 children against measles, MSF identified 111 severely malnourished and 387 moderately malnourished children, and will now open a therapeutic feeding center (TFC) to care for them.

Transcript of a press teleconference hosted by MSF