Niger Facing High Child Malnutrition Rates

While the world focuses on the famine in East Africa, warnings about high child malnutrition rates in Niger appear "to have gone unnoticed by the international media," AlertNet reports.

This year in Niger, 200,000 children between the ages of six months and five years old will require treatment for severe acute malnutrition and 500,000 additional children will need treatment for moderate acute malnutrition, according to Niger officials, AlertNet notes. Though malnutrition rates have decreased recently, "rates remain above international emergency thresholds," the news service writes (Fominyen, 7/27). AlertNet also published a Q&A with Eric Alain Ategbo, UNICEF's nutrition manager in Niger (Fominyen, 7/27).