Niger

"When aid agencies approached the African Development Bank last year for cholera prevention support in the Central African Republic, the response was: "When you report a cholera case, we'll give you the money." In Guinea, just a few aid agencies – Action Against Hunger and Unicef – work on cholera prevention with the government, while one – Médecins sans Frontièrs – is doing the bulk of the treatment and transmission containment...

"Aid agencies are scrambling to treat thousands of cholera patients in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, where the number of infections is mounting by over 250 per day. Most patients are from the city’s various urban slums, where open defecation is rife, toilets are rare, sewage is improperly disposed of, and awareness of cholera is very low.

"A protracted drought in the Sahel region of Africa is causing a food crisis that could leave up to 17 million people, and 1 million children, hungry this summer. In response, the U.S. Agency for International Development will provide $81 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the region, the agency announced Thursday...Millions are threatened by famine this year in Sahel, according to the NGO Action Against Hunger." 

"...More than 1 million children under 5 in this wide, arid swath of Africa below the Sahara are now at risk of a food shortage so severe that it threatens their lives, UNICEF estimates... 

Hunger in this region is a lurking predator that never quite leaves, and comes back every year to pick off the weakest. Even in a non-crisis year, some 300,000 children die from lack of food across western and central Africa. All it takes is a drought and a failed harvest, and those who are now barely living on one meal a day will starve.

"In Mali the strain of fighting Gadaffi-armed Tuareg rebels in the north has prompted a political crisis, leading directly to a military coup and prompting an exodus from besieged villages, exacerbating food shortages. Of the families fleeing the violence, 20% have at least one child suffering from severe acute malnutrition, according to Action Against Hunger (AAH). 'These are families who have had to hastily flee the violence and they don't have access to basic products like clothing, blankets or cooking utensils.

"Children in western Chad have started dying from malnutrition as a major hunger crisis threatening West Africa begins to take hold, an international charity has warned. Child malnutrition rates have soared in the region of Kanem, which is now in the grip of a full blown emergency, Action Contre La Faim (ACF) said...More than 2,000 children in Kanem were admitted to nutrition treatment centres in February alone, triple the number treated in December, according to ACF.

"More than 2,000 malnourished children were admitted to Action Against Hunger | ACF International’s nutritional centres in Kanem in February alone, which is more than three times the number treated in the same month last year.