The World Health Organization reports millions of people in
Niger are going hungry and tens of thousands are malnourished,
many of them children. The U.N. agency says it needs more than
$650,000 to provide emergency nutritional feeding for thousands
of acutely malnourished children under age five. Niger is one of
the most impoverished countries in the world. It suffers from
chronic food shortages. A survey carried out by the World Health
Organization in December found 2.7 million people or one-in-five
households are severely food insecure. WHO spokesman Paul
Garwood says the survey also shows more than five million
additional people are moderately food insecure. "More than half
the population is estimated to have less than two months worth
of food stocks to survive until the next harvest in October," he
said. "In the first six weeks of 2010, nearly 29,000 cases of
global acute malnutrition were reported. And, of these, 15,370
were cases of moderate acute malnutrition and more than 13,000
cases were of severe