The UK international aid agency Oxfam is calling for the UN at its forthcoming Summit on 14 September to stop food crises like Niger from ever happening again.
Oxfam has proposed a US$1 billion permanent emergency food fund be put on the Summit agenda, said to be one of the biggest gatherings of world leaders in history.
The fund would require UN members to make regular payments in order that money be immediately available for any country facing a food emergency like Niger.
The current famine is threatening 3.6 million people in West Africa, including 800,000 children, with severe malnutrition and death.
World Vision is one of numerous Christian charities working in the region to help the victims of the famine. According to the charity child mortality rates under the age of five are now reaching more than three children per 10,000 a day, the level of an official emergency.
Canadian nutritionist Sarah Carr said: "The situation is escalating and we aren’t even in the peak of the hungry season between harvests yet."
World Vision has been supplying feeding packets for up to 5,000 moderately malnourished children outwith the feeding centres. Only children identified as severely malnourished are deemed acute enough to be admitted to the centres, with some children being transported from as much as four hours away.
Carr was particularly concerned with the high number of parents who still have not sought help for their starving children as it is the critical planting season.
According to Carr, "many just don’t have time for their kids to be sick right now."
"Mothers here have as many as nine children. Who’s going to look after the others if she takes one sick child to the hospital? Who will do the field work?" she said.
