MALI: Malnutrition - Worrying in north, rising in south

"...The UN World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 1.7 million Malians are at risk of severe hunger this year due to drought, high food prices, poor terms of trade for animals, and conflict-driven insecurity. Malnutrition rates are sharpened by these factors, but they are always unacceptably high in Mali.
Médecins du Monde will undertake active nutrition screening next week as part of a Kidal-wide vaccination campaign, but the staff of NGO Action against Hunger (ACF), who are responding to malnutrition needs in Gao further south, said this was not yet possible due to insecurity in the area. 'We don’t know the [actual] malnutrition rates', said ACF head Florence Daunis, whose staff in the north are limited to working in the Gao hospital and bigger clinics. 'All we know is that we have taken in lots of malnourished children in the reference centres.'"