Antananarivo (The Southern African Times) – Madagascar is going through its worst drought in the last 40 years and heads for suffering a famine of catastrophic proportions, according to the report today of a specialised UN agency.
The most affected area is the south of the country, where tens of thousands of people have great difficulties finding their daily food even before the arrival of the dry season, the report of the World Food Program (WFP) points out.
This would be the first famine from climate change, after four years of insufficient rainfall and profusion of sand storms, a condition that has a direct impact on the lack of rainfall, the text says.
The WFP estimates put the number of people living in the area known as the Great South already suffering from extreme hunger at 28 thousand, adding a million 140 thousand in conditions of ‘acute food insecurity’.
Populations of that Malagasy area survive by feeding themselves on leaves, roots, cactus fruits and insects in a situation that tends to worsen, NGO Médecins sans Frontieres predicted. In a separate study they estimate that by next December more than one million 310 people could starve.
