By Diadie Ba

DAKAR, Oct 9 (Reuters). Millions of children on the fringes of the Sahara desert are at risk from malnutrition even though a good end to the rainy season should help boost cereal production, the United Nations said on Monday.

Child mortality rates in West Africa's Sahel region, which stretches along the southern edge of the world's largest desert, are the highest anywhere, with over half of the deaths caused by malnutrition, according to the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP).

"Although households are restocking their granaries, millions of children across the region remain threatened by malnutrition", it said in a statement.

A plague of locusts and the worst drought in decades left many people hungry last year in Niger, in the centre of the Sahel, shocking television viewers around the world with images of emaciated children as 3.6 million people ran short of food.

Donor funding has helped aid agencies lower acute malnutrition rates in the landlocked former French colony but WFP officials emphasise that the damage caused by food shortages does not simply disappear with a new harvest.

The crisis in Niger exhausted village grain stores and many families ran up large debts, leaving them short of food again despite a better harvest.

"Acute malnutrition is the tip of the iceberg", WFP said.

"Chronic malnourishment or stunting affects many millions more across the Sahel and although not immediately life-threatening, it robs children of physical and intellectual development into adulthood".

GRADUAL PROGRESS

Food shortages are a seasonal problem in the Sahel - where more than a third of children under the age of 5 are chronically malnourished - particularly around the middle of the year before the harvest begins around October.

Last year's crisis was the worst for years, grabbing international headlines and pricking donor consciences. WFP said it needed $47 million - roughly the amount Hollywood's most popular movies take on their opening night in the United States - to continue feeding the hungry in Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso into 2007.

Recent donations from Saudi Arabia and the United States, both around $5 million, had eased the most pressing funding worries and WFP said it had made significant progress in Niger.

Nearly 300,000 children had been treated at more than 900 feeding centres around the country this year, helping bring acute malnutrition levels down to 11.8 percent - still considered "serious" by the World Health Organization - from a peak of 17.3 percent in 2000.

WFP said the additional funds it needed would be used to stop 175,000 children falling into the severe stages of malnutrition in Mali, provide fortified food rations to 475,000 children and their mothers in Burkina Faso, and help provide daily supplies to 32,000 hungry children in Mauritania.

Reuters AlertNet

Enlaces sobre Direitos Humanos