Niger: Niger's Malnourished Children

In Niger, children with dusty blond hair are ubiquitous: It's a sure sign of widespread malnourishment. Resources are scarce, while fertility rates are soaring. Yet family planning is an uphill struggle.

Sometimes, when she has no more food to give to her children, Haowa has to watch as they cry themselves to sleep. "It doesn't take long for them to calm down", she says, staring at her hands. Her voice is quiet, almost dispassionate.

Haowa's husband is a subsistence farmer, and often, she says, the maize and millet he grows just isn't enough to feed his two wives and their 12 children. The slight 31-year-old is constantly hungry: She regularly skips her dinner, she says, so she has more food to give to her eight children.

Malnourishment is common in Niger

She shrugs and stares down at the two tiny toddlers she's cradling in her arms. Haowa has pulled up her bright, colorful blouse to let them suckle her breasts.

As she looks on impassively, one of her sons slowly extends his hand and feebly tries to push his brother away - almost, it seems, as if he's fighting his triplet for their mother's milk.

His mother leans forward and gestures to his thin body. "You can see from the eyes, the head, the stomach and the arms", she whispers.

The two children, she says, are both severely malnourished. Their hair is dusty blonde, a sure sign that they are lacking vital proteins and minerals.

Their movements are lethargic, as several fat flies crawl over their large dark eyes and noses, they just stare vacantly into the distance.

Another of Haowa's children, a petite 10 year-old in a bright red dress and a matching headscarf tied tightly around her wispy blond, is sitting on the floor next to her mother. She smiles shyly, peering from behind the third triplet she's cuddling in her arms.

The toddler is clutching an empty plastic package: It's an emergency ration that the small health clinic in southern Niger hands out to parents of severely malnourished children. Haowa has come to the clinic for help.

Periodic famines

Every week, some 30 to 40 children receive the peanut paste, mixed with oil, flour and soya. For in Niger, one of the world's least developed countries, resources are scarce.

Every year the desert inches further south, eating into the arable land. The UN estimates that almost a third of the country's population is malnourished. When harvests periodically fail, famine strikes and as malnutrition turns severe, families pour into the nutrition centres.

This chronic food insecurity is compounded by extremely high fertility rates: In Niger, on average, women have 7.6 children and often mothers like Haowa just aren't able to feed them all.

That is why the small clinic doubles as a family planning centre. Only a few meters from Haowa and her children, several women are sitting on a wooden bench in the shade of a small hut, chatting and laughing.

They're patiently waiting for their turn for a contraceptive implant. As a nurse in a no-nonsense neat white uniform summons a young woman with a flower-print headscarf inside, she hands her baby to another woman, and disappears into the dark and cramped hut.

By Naomi Conrad

 

View the original article here