Will help be too little, too late?

THE Red Cross distribution truck pulls along the dusty track into the village 15km west of Tahoua in the West African country of Niger. The villagers surge forward around the truck, their hands raised in desperation for the millet and dates which are due to be handed out.

"There's always a risk that the crowd could start out calm and then turn angry," says Eric Rossi, a French Red Cross logistician attached to the British Red Cross Emergency Response Unit. "We have to be incredibly careful."

The villagers hang back a little. Zeinabou, a 40-year-old widow and mother of ten, says there is no meat, milk or grain to be had anywhere. Their animals have all died.

"For one year it's been like this," she says, pointing to the bowl of dried grass that, along with small quantities of vegetable oil, has become the staple diet in Niger.

Niger, situated on the edge of the Sahara desert, is rated by the UN as one of the poorest countries in the world. It came under French rule in the 1890s before independence in 1960. Even before the crisis which sparked the launch of an £8m appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) yesterday, it had the second highest global mortality rate among children under five. One in four children born in Niger do not see their fifth birthday.

But a combination of drought and a plague of desert locusts has left almost eight million people in Niger and neighbouring Mali - where Oxfam estimates that 1.1 million people are at risk - Mauritania and Burkino Faso facing severe food shortages.

The nomadic herders and the farming families are on the brink of starvation. What little food there is has soared in price and is out of reach of the majority of communities. The charity Oxfam has reported a six-fold increase in the price of millet alone.

The UN estimates that Niger needs 23,000 tonnes of food aid to avoid famine, with around 2.5 million suffering from food shortages and at least 800,000 children at risk of malnutrition. But it is a crisis which has been a long time in the making. Aid agencies began warning of the looming crisis in early autumn when the crops failed last summer.

The United Nations first appealed for assistance for Niger in November, but its pleas went largely unheeded by the West as it focused its attention on other humanitarian disasters, notably the Boxing Day tsunami and the civil war in Sudan's western region of Darfur. Another appeal by the UN in May went unheeded. Finally, in July after yet another appeal, this time for $30m, it received $10m. But it was too little too late.

As the G8 leaders gathered in Gleneagles last month to discuss the debt crisis in Africa, the UN issued more alarming statistics. A fifth of Niger's 11m population were at risk of starvation. But while the leaders of the world's richest countries agreed to wipe off the country's $1.8bn debt, they made no mention of the food crisis. Families in Niger, meanwhile, were feeding their children grass to keep them alive.

As pop stars sang of making poverty history in the Live8 concerts across the world, aid agencies were desperately trying to raise awareness of the plight of millions of West Africans. But, once the concerts were over, the news agenda switched to terrorism.

Oxfam, which is one of 13 charities on the DEC, began raising the profile of the developing crisis in the Sahel region in October. It has had teams in the worst-hit areas since the end of June.

The charity says Niger is now in a situation of being at the "11th hour" and that the money should have been accessible four to five months ago to save lives.

Kate Pattison, a spokeswoman for Oxfam, says: "The crisis has exposed a fundamental flaw in the system, which is the gap between raising awareness and getting the money to help people.

"As a result of Live8 and the Make Poverty History campaign, people are much more aware of issues in countries such as Africa. World leaders are beginning to look at these issues and to take them seriously.

"We are calling for a £1bn fund financed by the richer countries which will be in place to prevent crises like this happening again. The next time you get the early warning signs the money will be there."

The Niger government has also come under attack for apparently ignoring the plight of the starving. In January it distributed bags of millet at a subsidised price, but many still could not afford it. In June, 2,000 people marched through the capital Niamey demanding food, but the government refused their demands.

Each of the aid agencies will be helping with their own projects in West Africa. Oxfam is giving out vouchers that people can exchange for food. The charity is also co-ordinating a mass slaughter programme to cull the animals which are so weak they are suffering. The nomadic herders are being recompensed if they lose animals and it will give the stronger animals a better chance of survival.

But the slow response has also meant the amount of cash needed has rocketed because it is not simply a matter of feeding people, but of bringing them back from the brink of death. The children who are in the acute stages of starvation are desperately weak. They have fevers, respiratory problems and slip in and out of consciousness.

Aid has begun trickling in, but it is not enough. It also takes time and meticulous planning to ensure that the food can reach the people. Niger is a landlocked, isolated country. Adequate warehousing needs locating, volunteers need training to distribute it and the charities need to locate the most vulnerable areas so they an ensure that the maximum number of lives are saved. It is frustrating for the aid workers, when they can see the food in the warehouse, but if they distribute it incorrectly, it may do more harm than good.

In Tahoua town, in Niger, a training session run by nutritionist Mija Ververs from Red Cross headquarters in Geneva is underway. She is teaching a group of ten local nurses and volunteers how to identify the children who are most in need of supplementary nutrition.

"In some ways, every day is a lost day," she says. "We know that they need this food now. But we have to prepare, we have to train the people, otherwise this operation just can't happen."

How you can help

The Royal Mail has set up a PO Box address specifically for any donations to the appeal. Anyone wishing to send a cheque by post should write to: Disasters Emergency Committee Niger Crisis Appeal, PO Box 999, London, EC3A 3AA.

Alternatively, people can contact the DEC appeal on 0870 606 0900 or visit www.dec.org.uk

What your money can buy

£10: Will buy rehydration salts for 500 malnourished children

£50: Will feed a family of seven for up to two months

£100: Will keep ten milking cows alive for six weeks

Source: Disasters Emergency Committee