Worrying malnutrition trends in Africa's Sahel region

An estimated 6.3 million children under the age of five in Africa's Sahel region will suffer from wasting this year of which more than 1.4 million will suffer from severe wasting, the United Nations agencies and their partners warned on Wednesday.

The West and Central Africa Nutrition working group said at least 900,000 young lives could be at risk across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal.

They said the global acute malnutrition cases in the region are expected to increase by 27 percent compared to last year and have a 62 percent increase compared to 2018, marking the fifth consecutive year of record highs.

Almost 70 percent of the children under five years expected with wasting in the region are in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

The working group linked the malnutrition cases to multiple underlying vulnerabilities such as widespread household food insecurity, insufficient diet, and inadequate care practices for infants and young children.

This is in addition to high incidence of childhood illnesses, widespread poverty, inadequate access to water and sanitation and health services, as well as gender and other social norms.

They expressed concerns on the food security situation in the six countries, with almost 11.3 million people expected to be in need of urgent food assistance during the next lean season.

Such a level has never been reached so far, displaying an increase of 92 percent when compared to 2015-2020, they said.

They warned that the number of undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa will increase from 2.6 to 5.1 million, if the conflict in Ukraine results in a prolonged reduction in food exports from Ukraine and the Russian Federation, according to the simulations from Food and Agriculture Organization.

They added that the increasing insecurity in central Sahel and Lake Chad Basin is further aggravating an already fragile and precarious situation, leading to massive populations' displacement.

As of the end of last year, more than 2.5 million people were internally displaced in the central-Sahel.

In Burkina Faso, the number of internally displaced persons grew by 50 percent last year to over 1.5 million. In Chad, the number of refugees grew by 17 percent to 555,787 while the number of internally displaced persons grew by 21 percent to 406,573 last year.

The joint note by the UN agencies and partners advocates for a paradigm shift to both urgently respond to immediate needs and address the root causes of malnutrition.

"As conflicts, insecurity, socio-economic crisis, and recurrent extreme climatic events in the region continue to deteriorate and further aggravate the nutrition of children, we need to shift to 'business unusual' to address their needs in a sustainable way," said Marie-Pierre Poirier, the UN Children's Fund regional director for West and Central Africa. 

"While treatment remains an imperative to save the lives of children most severely affected, we must shift the paradigm and focus on scaling interventions to prevent malnutrition, especially in the most affected locations." 

The working group said $93.4 million is required to prevent wasting among children, as well as pregnant and lactating mothers, based on data from nine countries.