The Sahel food crisis continues to affect the lives of millions in West Africa.Last year's harvest failed due to erratic rain and combined with high food prices this has left many communities unable to cope. Currently close to 20million people is food insecure particularly in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali,Mauritania, Gambia, Niger and Chad.
In the Sahel region, malnutrition rates among children are high in many countries.Burkina Faso is among the ten poorest countries in the world according to the UN Human Development Index and has a chronic malnutrition problem. However,fresh statistics for the first half of 2012 indicate that the number of acute severely malnourished children in the arid North has tripled compared to the same period in 2011. And these are just the cases registered. Unicef estimates that thetotal number of acute severe cases of malnutrition throughout the country could reach 100,000 this year. Part of the increase can be explained by adjusted definitions for malnutrition presented by the WHO recently. However, it's clear that the current food crisis has a great effect on the numbers. The number of acute moderate malnutrition is many fold the number of acute severe case.
Video 1 - Sahel Burkina Faso Malnutrition B-Roll
Video 2 - Sahel Senegal Malnutrition B-Roll
Shotlists are attached