CHAD: Hungry season sets in early

"A nutrition survey conducted last December in Bahr El Ghazel, a semi-arid pastoral region in the west of the country, showed that 27 percent of the 687 under five children surveyed were underweight. This is almost double the emergency threshold set by the World Health Organization at 15 percent. Loan Tran-Thanh, the head of Action Against Hunger (ACF) in Chad which conducted the survey, told IRIN the results were alarming. 'This was in the middle of the harvest period when malnutrition rates should be lower than [during] the lean rain season,” she said. “If it is already that high in a harvest period, then how bad could it get during the lean period?'"