[pronut-hiv] NIGER: Life just gets tougher in world*s poorest country

["ProNut-HIV" <pronut-hiv@healthnet.org>]

NIAMEY, 27 Apr 2006 (IRIN) - While Niger is at peace, each year it
faces an increasingly difficult battle against hunger. What it needs to
win the war, according to its people, are not sacks of food but a
long-term international commitment to help haul the country out of
crippling poverty.

Rated the world's poorest country according to UN statistics, Niger
is more impoverished today than it was 30 years ago, with more than 60
percent of the population surviving on less than US $1 a day. 

"We have peace here in Niger, that's true, but we have hunger,"
said Issa Haladou who lives in the southeast Zinder region, one of the
hardest hit by food shortages last year. "We don't always need gifts
of tonnes of cereals, what we need is help to develop." 

With more and more mouths to feed and desertification biting further
into the vast arid nation each year, Niger has few natural resources to
launch economic development projects. Nearly 80 percent of its 12
million people live in rural areas and 84 percent of men and 97 percent
of women are involved in subsistence agriculture of some form.

"So many people in Niger are so desperately poor that a small shock
creates a humanitarian disaster," said Toby Porter, the Save the
Children's Director of Emergencies, in a recent statement. "There is
no war in Niger, no rebel groups, no despots, no problems getting the
aid in. It's just poverty."

Perennial hunger...

Food shortages are a perennial problem in Niger, particularly in the
lean season before the harvest, each June, July and August. Last year, a
double-whammy of drought and West Africa's largest locust plague for
15 years left Nigeriens hungrier than ever.

Media images of malnourished babies kick-started a multi-million dollar
relief operation, and one year on aid workers are warning of new
problems caused by families running into debt during last year's
shortages and unable to build up reserves. As of mid-April, the UN's
children's agency UNICEF had helped over 50,000 child cases of
malnutrition, of which 15 percent were severely malnourished - or so
hungry their life was in danger.

Only this week, the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (OCHA) calculated that 33 percent of Niger was in a precarious
food security situation and that pockets of communities are reporting
that they are eating less each day.

...disease...

At the same time, meningitis which is endemic in much of the arid Sahel
region of West Africa, killed 154 people in the first 14 weeks of the
year and affected 2,381, according to OCHA. Most affected by the
outbreak has been Maradi, last year's epicentre for the hunger crisis,
with over 50 percent or 1,320 of the total cases.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), health facilities are
extremely limited even in the capital Niamey and other urban centres,
while the rural majority have "completely inadequate" health access.
As a result, mosquito-borne malaria, a treatable disease, accounts for
50 percent of deaths in children aged under five.

And waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid regularly claim
hundreds of lives in a country where only 41 percent of the population
has access to improved drinking water, said WHO.

...and now, bird flu

And this year, Niger faces a new health and food security threat - bird
flu. 

The deadly H5N1 virus that can infect and kill humans appeared in
February in Magaria, 200 km east of Maradi and close to the border with
Nigeria, which reported Africa's first case of the deadly virus
earlier that month.

Aid workers are concerned that health campaigns will not be enough to
drive the message home about culling sick birds to avoid handling.
Furthermore, it took nearly a month for the cash-strapped government to
launch culling. Funds since have been secured from the French
development Agency (AFD), but only 60 percent of 25,000 birds identified
for extermination have been destroyed to date, according to OCHA.

According to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSnet), bird
flu is a serious threat to Niger's poultry industry, "which will
inevitably undercut a basic source of income for poor households in
general and women in particular," said a report released on
Wednesday.

Animal farmers may be able to take some succour, said FEWSnet, as the
slump in poultry prices that typically accompanies confirmation of bird
flu could drive up meat prices. But in Niger, few can see anything
positive in the bird flu outbreak.

"Last year it was hunger, this year we are hungry and have bird flu.
Around Magaria bird flu has started to afflict poultry, one of
people's main sources of income," said Harouna Aboubacar a
resident of Niamey. "We are confronted by a deluge, but none of it is
our fault." 

Some Nigeriens say that family planning must be addressed if things are
ever to improve. Nigerien women have an average of eight children each,
the highest birth rate in the world, according to the UN, but a mother
can expect one in every three of those children to die before the age of
five. At the same time, only 17 percent of adults can read and write,
and illiteracy is even higher among women.

"In Niger we have too many children and our resources are not enough
to keep everyone," said Mani Issaka, a resident of Niamey who also
works at the government's health ministry. "We have a saying here,
'The mouth that God made will not be without food to eat,' but
seeing how things are these days that no longer seems to be the
case."