Organizations reallocating resources to meet food, health care needs
By Stephen Kaufman and Aviva Altmann, Washington File Staff Writers
Washington - In response to the humanitarian crisis in Niger and Africa's Sahel region, the U.S. government and U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have joined in the worldwide effort to relieve the hunger and malnutrition that is currently affecting more than 65 million people.
Two air freighters chartered by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) carrying 206 metric tons of special high-energy food aid are scheduled to arrive in the Niger's capital Niamey August 5, which USAID Director Andrew Natsios says will "immediately help feed tens of thousands of the most at-risk children."
The director's remarks were reported in an August 3 USAID press release.
USAID also funded the July 18 airlift of 45 metric tons of food. The two airlifts have brought the total amount of U.S. government assistance to combat the crisis in Niger to approximately $13.75 million for 2005.
In a press briefing August 5, USAID Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Public Affairs Ed Fox praised the United States' ongoing development assistance to the region as well as its response to the current emergency. "The United States, and in particular USAID, has been closely monitoring the food situation in Niger and the rest of the Sahel region since November... We have responded quickly and rather generously to this situation," Fox said.
USAID has provided $127 million to improve the lives of the people in the Sahel region for the 2005 fiscal year, including about $14 million specifically for locust eradication programs.
The United States is doing more than just providing emergency food relief; there are currently teams of people on the ground in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso from the Famine Early Warning Team. Officers from those countries' embassies are also monitoring the situation to assess what additional responses may be needed, according to Fox.
The lack of food is not the only serious factor causing death in the region. Malnutrition, the condition in which one does not get a proper balance of nutrients, causes one to be more susceptible to weakness and disease. Therefore, more deaths will arise from malnutrition than starvation alone, and thus will affect more people than just those who cannot get food.
"Chronic poverty" remains the underlying cause of the emergency situation, Fox said.
As well as sending the emergency food aid, USAID is funding the development work of four nongovernmental organizations: Africare, Catholic Relief Services, the Helen Keller Institute, and CARE, which all have programs dealing with the food crisis in Niger.
Others in the U.S. NGO community are also responding with food aid, medical care and other assistance, according to Dr. Mohammad Akhter, president and CEO of InterAction, an organization that coordinates the relief activities of 160 U.S.-based NGOs, making it the largest such alliance in the United States.
Ahkter said that six of his organization's member NGOs had already been in the region providing education, health and other development and assistance work.
When the food crisis emerged, he said, those organizations "mobilized their staff" to meet the urgency, directing them away from their normal work "to really provide food assistance and doing health care work for these people coming in for help."
Besides reallocating their resources, the NGOs have also been providing additional assistance. The original six organizations that were already in place on the ground have since been joined by 12 more InterAction-affiliated NGOs.
The 18 organizations connected with InterAction that are responding to the crisis are: Action Against Hunger, ADRA International, Africare, American Jewish World Service, American Red Cross, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service, Concern Worldwide US, Lutheran World Relief, Mercy Corps, Operation USA, Oxfam America, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and Hunger, Relief International, Save the Children, US Fund for UNICEF, and World Vision.
"I think some of the agencies work in multiple countries, but these 18 that I mentioned are really focused now on Niger," he said.
Donations are continuing to come in, Akhter said. "[W]e are very hopeful that the American people will respond the same way as they responded to the [December 2004 Indian Ocean] tsunami."
He said it will take some time before an aggregate total of private American donations can be calculated from the various NGOs, "but certainly it's very helpful and hopeful."
However, for now all resources must be reallocated to meet immediate needs, which Akhter said are "basically in ... two areas: the health care and the food."
"It's not an easy task," he said. "[M]any of the children were malnourished and require special kind of food and they require medical attention, and so they are providing food and medical care right now at the top of the list."
Logistics "is always a difficult thing," he added. "[T]aking a dollar or the money in cash and converting it into sanitation and water takes time. It takes effort and energy. That's very necessary to keep people healthy. And of course food distribution is an issue."
Akhter said he hopes that in the future the international community will respond "early on" to help prevent food crises such as the one in Niger and the Sahel region from becoming so severe.
The emergency situation is expected to continue "several months, if not several years," he said.
"[O]nce the children get to the malnutrition stage, when they get ... to a point where they are almost near death, then ... it takes much longer in health care and food and follow-up and to make sure that they have a chance to survive and grow up healthy," he said.
Akhter's organization provides a summary of how U.S.-based private relief organizations are responding to the crisis, available on InterAction's Web site.
For information on U.S. assistance, see U.S. Aid to Africa.
Also see the USAID Fact Sheet, Drought in Africa: USAID Assistance to Niger/Sahel.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)