the world food programme says there has
been no response to an appeal it made
for humanitarian help
for people facing hunger in madagascar
last week the un
issued a so-called flash appeal the
island country's agricultural season was
ruined by the worst straws in a decade
now because of that drought more than a
million people in southern madagascar
will need food aid
this year now the pandemic has added to
the hardship the seasonal work that
people often rely on
has been affected by the lockdown
a country desperate
children malnourished
parents trying but often failing to find
food
my children didn't eat for three days
and then died
because i their mother couldn't feed
them i know it was the famine that
killed them
this is madagascar's third consecutive
year of drought
in the south one in three people is
facing life-threatening shortages
of food and water
we're so poor that we have nothing to
eat because of the drought
in desperate efforts to keep hunger at
bay
many are now mixing white clay with
tamarind fruit
and eating it
if we had something proper to eat we
would never have eaten it
but we didn't know that white clay was
edible before
we tried to mix it and it worked
the un has launched an appeal for 76
million u.s dollars in emergency aid
the race to feed madagascans has been
made more complicated though
because of the global pandemic
we are trying to be out there
urgently right now to save lives
which are at risk the
covet 19 situation has of course
made everything much more difficult
without more help soon this humanitarian
crisis
will only get worse
for more on this we've invited jean-luc
zeblo onto the program he is the world
food programs country director for
madagascar welcome to
to the program mr zibla we've we've just
heard that the hunger crisis in in
madagascar is going to worsen
if help doesn't arrive soon how how
urgent
is the situation would you say
the situation right today is very
alarming
uh for several reasons because there has
been an extreme drought
for the the past year and
there has been basically no rain
except one single rain in december in
all the south of madagascar
the second reason is that the harvest in
last year
which is taking place in april may was
extremely poor
and therefore the people have exhausted
most of their stock so you've the un's
appealed for
76 million dollars to address the crisis
um
has that money come through
no the this flash appeal as it
called has been launched together by the
united nations and
the international community and the
government of madagascar
but so far we didn't see any result at
all
what does that tell us that um there
could be this this this crisis all these
people going hungry we
just saw in our report families
resorting to eating clay and leaves to
survive
and and yet people aren't responding to
this urgent appeal
let's say that uh this is this is quite
a normal situation
in terms of the lengths uh the time
lengths of the respond to
uh to this kind of appeal we just hope
that this appeal will be heard by the
international community
that it will be widely spread
and then some responses positive
responses will come
in the coming weeks and months if it
doesn't come
in the sense that we are hoping we we
think we wfp that uh
unfortunately we will go from a very
critical
situation to a prefamine situation
if nothing urgent is done
in addition of what we are doing with
some other partners
uh already to alleviate suffering of
these people
all right that's jean-luc ziblo from the
world food program
in madagascar thank you sir
thank you