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WFP Madagascar Country Brief, August 2016

Countries
Madagascar
Sources
WFP
Publication date

Highlights

  • Madagascar’s southern region has been experiencing a prolonged drought reinforced by the effects of El Niño. This has left 1.2 million people food-insecure, including 575,000 severely food-insecure from the eight most affected districts.

  • WFP urgently requires USD 20 million to continue relief food assistance until March 2017. If funding is not secured, 350,000 people per month will not receive life-saving food assistance.

  • For the school feeding programme, an additional USD 4.6 million is required to assist 300,000 children for the 2016/2017 school year.

Operational Updates

  • Drought in the south: The Crop and Food Security Assessment Mission (August) indicates that 1.2 million people are food-insecure as compared to 1.1 million identified in the February Food Security Evaluation. The overall number of severely food-insecure people in the seven most affected districts has slightly decreased from 665,000 to 575,000 as a result of different types of humanitarian assistance. However, the 2016 CFSAM identified an additional caseload of 25,000 people found to be food-insecure in four communes of the district of Fort-Dauphin.

  • WFP response to drought: WFP implements life-saving general food distribution for 300,000 people in the seven districts most-affected districts. In areas where markets are functioning, WFP assists 80,000 people through unconditional cash-based-transfers to help households buy foods.

  • WFP provides blanket supplementary feeding for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) prevention to 11,000 children 6 – 23 months; and supplementary feeding for MAM treatment to 13,000 pregnant/nursing women and children 6 – 59 months. From November, WFP will be extending nutritional support to the areas not covered by the National Community Nutrition Programme, aiming to reach 70,000 people.

  • School feeding: the 2016/17 school year will officially start on 05 October. WFP is dispatching food commodities for the first quarter of the year, reaching 243,000 children from 1,086 primary schools out of the 300,000 targeted.

  • Cyclone season: in preparation for the cyclone season and a La Niña event, WFP will update its Emergency Preparedness and Response Plan and the Concept of Operation Document. Preparation include the prepositioning of contingency food stocks in cyclone prone remote areas.

  • Logistic challenge: Due to poor shipping services in the country, the arrival of commodities can take up to six months. Therefore, even if funds for School Feeding are mobilized soon, timely distributions might not be ensured for the next school year.