Highlights

For 2012, the annual caseload of severe acute malnutrition (SAM) across the Sahel Band was estimated at 127,300 children under five years of age, based on August 2011 nutrition survey results. As of December, 146,685 cases of SAM have been admitted for treatment (115.2%). According to the last nutrition survey with SMART methods, the GAM rate is 18.9% in June 2012 across the Sahel belt;
UNICEF and the nutrition cluster estimate that 126,000 children will suffer from severe acute malnutrition in 2013 in the Sahel belt of Chad.

LES TITRES
• Tchad: l'hospitalisation de dizaines d'enfants sans lien avec le vaccin contre la méningite (Romandie, 22 jan.)
• A determined mother saves her son from the clutches of malnutrition in Chad (UNICEF, 18 Jan.)
• Le Tchad veut inverser la tendance du VIH/sida d’ici 2015 (Xinhua, 24 jan.)
• Chad’s health system struggles to combat malnutrition (IRIN, 24 Jan.)
• Tchad: 336 réfugiés vivant au Cameroun regagnent N’Djamena (Xinhua, 22 jan.)
• Tchad: Le nouveau Premier Ministre et ses priorités (Journal du Tchad, 22 jan.)

1. SUMMARY

The 2013 Sahel Strategy aims to respond to the ‘triple crisis’ currently affecting the Sahel: i) the continued humanitarian impact of acute crisis of 2012 due to factors such as drought in 2011, high food prices and low agriculture production; ii) the underlying chronic nature of food insecurity, malnutrition and the erosion of resilience in the region; and iii) the current Mali crisis, which has resulted in the significant displacement of IDPs within the country and an on-going exodus of refugees to neighbouring countries.

Introduction

Principaux faits:

• Notification des maladies à potentiel épidémique ci-dessous dans les 9 pays touchés par la crise humanitaires, entre janvier et avril 2012
  -898 cas de cholera dont 22 décès,
  -11058 cas de méningite dont 846 décès et
  -28292 cas de rougeole dont 183 décès

• Soutien de L’OMS aux pays affectés à travers les dons de médicaments, l’appui à la mise en œuvre des interventions de lutte contre la maladie (campagnes de vaccination, renforcement des capacités) et la mobilisation des ressources financières.

Highlights

• With the beginning of the rainy season, a new threat has appeared: on 20 June, the government of Niger appealed for international support to fight the early stages of an invasion of desert locusts in northern Niger. If not treated immediately, this plague will put the forthcoming harvest season (September-November) at high risk. The locusts are coming from outbreak areas along both sides of the Algeria/Libya border where infestations were triggered by desert rainfalls, and control operations were hampered by armed conflicts and insecurity.

The Sahel region is grappling with a severe food and nutrition crisis. The humanitarian community is scaling up response to this crisis, but significant funding gaps remain. Urgent support is needed to ensure that programmes are in place before the crisis peaks in June.

The crisis is further exacerbated by the consequences of the conflict that has plagued northern Mali. Widespread humanitarian needs persist in Mali while neighboring countries are faced with an influx of refugees to areas already among the most severely affected by the food and nutrition crisis.

7 June 2012 : Since 1 January 2012, an outbreak of meningitis has been reported in 42 districts in 10 African countries, and contributed to some 11,000 cases, as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). Countries affected include Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Central African Republic, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Nigeria and Sudan. Burkina Faso is the most adversely affected by the outbreak, with some 5,300 suspected cases, and 553 deaths attributed to the disease.