Dealing with the looming food crisis now will cost donors far less than if they leave it to become a full-blown disaster, says U.N. official
DAKAR (AlertNet) – Donors may be feeling overstretched but acting now to mitigate a looming food crisis in the Sahel will cost them far less than if they leave it to become a full-blown hunger disaster, a senior U.N. official says.
Between five and nine million people in countries just below the Sahara face hunger next year following low rainfall, poor harvests, high food prices and a drop in remittances from migrants, aid agencies have warned.
“We know that the donor community has a lot of requests being made of them around the world, but we ask of them to respond in time here, not just because of the humanitarian obligation to save lives, but it would save them some money,” said John Ging, head of operations at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“It is cheaper, it is more cost efficient to prevent something than it is to respond when something has happened.”
Ging was speaking in Dakar on Thursday during the launch of a U.N.-led plan of action to avert a major disaster in the semi-arid Sahel region.
People in Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad are at particularly high risk, with national food reserves dangerously low and prices of some key cereals as much as 40 percent higher than the five-year average.
However, initial assessments show that nutritional problems could also hit parts of northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon and central Senegal, U.N. agencies say.
Using Niger as an example, Ging said it cost four times less to keep a child healthy than to try to save the same child’s life if no action is taken and the child is not treated until it has become malnourished.
“In Niger the monthly cost of feeding a child with three meals ranges between $40 and $50. If this child suffers from acute malnutrition and has to be hospitalised, the cost of the standard two month treatment will amount to $400,” Ging said.
The strategy launched in Dakar outlines what needs to be done immediately to prepare for the imminent crisis and also details long-term measures which would improve people’s resilience to recurrent climatic shocks such as drought.
It calls for the mobilisation of financial resources, including disbursing funds to U.N. agencies on the ground to start cash-for-work schemes in places where the vulnerability is severe.
The plan also emphases the importance of sorting out the logistics for delivering aid, given that the worst hit areas are landlocked and may prove difficult to reach at short notice.
Click here for the strategy report (in French).
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