UN: Nearly 5 million in Mali are hungry

New York - A convergence of droughts, harvest failures, locust
invasions and political conflicts in Mali have left 4.75 million people
without enough to eat, UN officials said on Friday.

Unicef Emergency Director Afshan Khan said the children's agency
estimates that almost a million children are suffering from varying
degrees of malnutrition - and close to half a million youngsters will
suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.

"That's comparable to the crises we see in South Sudan and the Horn
of Africa," Khan said.

John Ging, the director of UN humanitarian operations, warned that
without an urgent infusion of additional funds "we can expect that
the situation will continue to deteriorate."
He said the United Nations has received just $230m of the $481m it
needs for humanitarian aid for Mali - just 48%.

In June Ging said that nearly 500 000 children under the age of five
were at risk of acute malnutrition and 1.5 million people were "food
insecure".

Khan said Unicef more than doubled the number of malnourished
children it was providing special nutrition for to 120 000 at the end
of 2013, "but that is a drop in the bucket compared to what is
needed".

Ging and Khan were part of a mission of emergency directors for UN
agencies and NGOs that visited Mali from 3-5 November.

"Mali has been going through a chronic nutrition crisis," Khan said.
"It's related to droughts, harvest failures, locust invasions and it's
further been aggravated by the political conflict, the insecurity, the
population displacement."

- AP

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