The United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (Unicef) Tuesday launched an appeal of $22 million to respond to the crisis caused by effects of El Nino weather condition.<\/p>\n
The funds are being sought with the goal to provide children in the country access to safe water, nutrition, education, health and other protection services.<\/p>\n
A press statement from the UN agency says this is part of the Humanitarian Action for Children (HAC) for 2017.<\/p>\n
It says as the lean season in Malawi hits its peak, close to one million children will be affected by hunger.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe country is still struggling to cope with the worst drought in 35 years. Despite the good rains, hunger is still widespread as families will only be able to harvest in late April,\u201d part of the statement reads.<\/p>\n
It further says current statistics indicate that 94 percent of children aged six months to two years are not meeting the minimum acceptable diet while 45 percent of the households are classified as having inadequate food consumption, which means they consume limited or insufficient nutritious foods.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the past two years, adverse weather conditions as a result of the El Nino phenomenon have exposed children to different challenges. Apart from malnutrition, we have also seen a rise in the number of children dropping out of school due to hunger-related issues,\u201d said Unicef Malawi Deputy Representative, Roisin De Burca.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Unicef, we are working with partners to ensure that the rights of children in the country are not violated as they are prone to abuse under the current circumstances,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Unicef\u2019s HAC sets out the agency\u2019s 2017 appeal and the areas of priority for children to survive and thrive in the face of extraordinary challenges.<\/p>\n
By December last year, Unicef Malawi had reached over one million children through mass screening for malnutrition and community mobilisation campaigns and 50,054 children were treated for severe malnutrition.<\/p>\n
In 2017, Unicef is targeting to treat 64,826 children aged between six months and five years for severe acute malnutrition.<\/p>\n
\u201cMalnutrition is a silent threat to millions of children in Malawi. The damage it does is irreversible, robbing children of their mental and physical potential.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn its worst form, severe malnutrition can be deadly and we need resources to reach out to every child in Malawi so that we identify, treat and cure the disease. No child deserves to die of malnutrition,\u201d De Burca said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (Unicef) Tuesday launched an appeal of $22 million to respond to the crisis caused by effects of El Nino weather condition. The funds are being sought with the goal to provide children in the country access to safe water, nutrition, education, health and other protection services. A press statement from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":39986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39987,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39982\/revisions\/39987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}