Red Cross Blogs

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Before mid-morning it is already hot in Tin Akoff and Mohamed Ingouda, 46, stands patiently in line waiting for his Burkinabe Red Cross food voucher.

“We are all suffering due to the bad rain and bad harvest,” says Mohamed, who is a farmer. “I have 11 children to feed and of course I have a problem to find food.”

In 1974, Mohamed moved to the Ivory Coast where he had a job as a fishmonger, but in 2007 he lost his job and went home to Tin Akoff, in the north of Burkina Faso. Like most people in the Sahel region where he lives, Mohamed now survives by growing millet and sorghum and tending livestock.

Access to food

Failed crops, rising food prices and the underlying issue of poverty mean thousands of families who usually rely on growing their own food can’t afford to buy the food available in the market. In October 2011, the Burkinabe government reported the price of maize had increased by 35 per cent compared to 2010. *

Those who have livestock are having to sell them at lower than usual prices, in order to buy their staple foods, knowing they still have difficult months ahead of them until their next harvest, around October.

Families without livestock assets are turning to more extreme coping mechanisms, such as: searching for wild food; reducing the number of meals they eat; depending on friends and extended family; sending girls to the city to work as home help and men leaving to look for work in the Ivory Coast.

Uncertain future

“People are not realising how bad it is,” Mohamed says. “But sometimes we spend a day without eating at all. Also, there’s no pasture for the lambs and they are not in a good state. We have to sell our lambs to buy some rice or millet, but the price we can sell them for is going down and the price of grains is going up.

“I’ve had to sell 15 lambs over the last seven months. I have never experienced it like this before. Last year one bag of millet cost 12,000 CFA francs [£15] and now it is double around 27,000 CFA [£33]. We don’t have enough money to buy millet to last us until the next harvest and we don’t have stocks of food, we are really suffering.

“Already, we are only eating once instead of three times a day and this has been going on for seven months.”

Red Cross food vouchers enable families to buy basic foods at local shops in their villages to meet their immediate needs without having to sell off more assets. In most cases, vouchers are preferable to distributing food parcels as they have the extra benefit of stimulating local markets, ensuring traders don’t take their produce elsewhere.

Despite his situation Mohamed has a generous smile. As he picks up his food voucher and heads off to the local store, he says: “This will help us survive for some weeks. After that, I don’t know what the future will be, but I must keep my family together.”

Donate to our West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

Read more stories about people affected by the food crisis

*  W.Africa Food Security Working Group, Sahel Strategy 2012

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Tags: Burkina Faso, food aid, food crisis, food distribution, food vouchers, Sahel

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So a food crisis stems from a shortage of food, right? Not necessarily. When communities are in food crisis, it is usually because people are unable to grow or buy enough to eat, rather than because of an overall shortage of food.

If a farmer’s crop fails – or their goats get ill and have to be sold at a low price – they will not have money to buy enough food, no matter how well-stocked the market is. Even if people can make a little money, a poor harvest will often cause food prices to soar unaffordably high.

Across the Sahel region of west Africa, regional unrest, higher food prices, drought, pest problems and reduced income from remittances have been key factors in turning the annual hunger season into a crisis. They have all disrupted people’s ability make money, or produce food, and afford food that is available to buy.

Disrupted livelihoods

While most areas of the Sahel are experiencing a combination of these trigger factors, places with violence and unrest are among the most vulnerable. In northern Mali, conflict between the Tuareg liberation movement and government forces has led to over 126,000 people being displaced from their homes and over 93,000 more fleeing into neighbouring Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Mauritania and Algeria.

Mary Atkinson, British Red Cross food security advisor, explains: “Regions where there is conflict are often the most food insecure. Violence and displacement disrupt people’s livelihoods, block their access to shops and markets, and force food prices up. It is likely that the conflict in Mali will make the food crisis there considerably worse.”

Continued fighting in Mali – coupled with a coup on 21 March 2012 – has added to people’s urgent needs, and made humanitarian access increasingly difficult.

Access to the most vulnerable

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is one of the only agencies able to help people in areas of conflict in Mali. The British Red Cross has already given £125,000 to support the ICRC’s economic security work in Mali and Niger.

These funds will also be used to provide emergency assistance of essential household items – tarpaulins, blankets, sleeping mats, mosquito nets, clothing, hygiene kits, buckets and kitchen sets – to approximately 9,600 people, as part of a programme that includes substantial food aid.

In Mali and across the Sahel region, more than 13 million people face severe food shortages. Support our work to help people in the region access food; donate to our West Africa Food Crisis Appeal.

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Tags: conflict, food crisis, food insecurity, Mali, West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

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Dadaab – the world’s oldest and largest refugee camp complex – is facing ever more serious and complex problems. But, while many organisations have pulled out due to the deteriorating security situation, the Kenya Red Cross is scaling up its operation.

The camp was established in Kenya in 1991, when many people fled their homes during the civil war in Somalia. Although originally designed for 90,000 people, the camp now holds over 450,000 refugees – in terms of population, Dadaab camp is effectively Kenya’s third largest city.

Scaling up services

The security threat in Dadaab is constantly shifting. There has been violence between refugees and attacks on aid workers, guards, churches and entertainment centres in the region. Increasingly, there are daylight assassinations within the camps, and roads have been booby trapped with mines.

Because of these dangers, the ability of other agencies to work in Dadaab is severely limited. However, despite the security situation and the highly stressful working environment, Kenya Red Cross volunteers and staff continue to increase their services to the camp. They are able to do this because of the Red Cross’ national reputation and its acceptance within the local community.

The Kenya Red Cross is now managing Ifo II West refugee camp in Dadaab and providing essential health and nutrition services, psycho-social support, security training and hygiene promotion services in Ifo II East. At the request of the UN Refugee Agency it is also taking on other health, water and sanitation services that were previously provided by other agencies.

In order to make this increase in services possible, the Kenya Red Cross has recruited 95 new staff – including psychologists, nutritionists, doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, security specialists, logisticians, teachers and criminologists – and many more volunteers.

Improving hygiene and health

The Kenya Red Cross plans to improve sanitation by building 6,300 household latrines. It has also distributed sanitation kits, buckets, spades, barrows and cleaning tools, and containers for solid waste management.

In Dadaab almost 60 per cent of children were either acutely malnourished, or severely malnourished. Ninety-four per cent of the 2,690 affected children the Kenya Red Cross has seen have recovered, with the remaining 6 per cent leaving the programme. It has also given over 2,600 pregnant women supplementary feeding.

Most people living in Dadaab had never received any vaccinations. The Kenya Red Cross has now given 94 per cent of residents a range of vaccinations including polio, measles and BCG. It is also helping prevent mother to child transmission of HIV, raising awareness about sexually transmitted infections, and providing tuberculosis testing and treatment, sexual and reproductive health counselling, gender violence counselling and antenatal care.

Continued challenges

As well as the security situation, Dadaab faces many other difficulties. During the November rains, tents sunk and latrines overflowed.  The rains in Kenya will soon start again, bringing more flooding.

The continued flow of refugees is also bringing further problems. With Kenya’s borders officially closed to refugees now, at least 3,500 refugees are living in the country unregistered. These people can use services in the camp, but can not access shelter.

Many Somali refugees have chosen to stay with relatives in villages on the Kenyan side of the Somali border, which places a huge strain on host communities. The Kenya Red Cross does not offer specific services for non-registered refugees, but is targeting host communities with its school feeding, water and food security projects.

Barry Armstrong, British Red Cross disaster response manager, said: “For the Kenya Red Cross, the challenges of working in Dadaab are numerous and unpredictable. However, the dedication of their staff and volunteers – coupled with the respected reputation of the organisation – is enabling them to take on these challenges and support thousands of extremely vulnerable people.”

Our East Africa Food Crisis Appeal is helping support work in Dadaab. Donate to the appeal

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Tags: East Africa, East Africa Food Crisis Appeal, Horn of Africa, Kenya, kenya red cross

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Let me tell you about a boy I met last month who I couldn’t help.

I was in a remote village in the middle of the hot, barren, sandy savannah in Burkina Faso. There, I met Ouilimatou Diko, a young boy, not even two years old, who had just been diagnosed by a Red Cross nurse as acutely malnourished.

I spent several weeks travelling through Senegal, Burkina Faso and Mali to report on the looming food crisis. I met many mothers and fathers who told me their stories about how they are literally on the brink of survival, how their children are hungry and the burden they carry worrying about how to provide the next meal.

Ouilimatou’s grandmother Fatima, had been looking after him since his mother became sick a month ago. Fatima had been bringing Ouilimatou to the Red Cross health post where he receives a vitamin and mineral enhanced porridge.

But because he’d developed diarrhoea, his health had rapidly deteriorated. The Red Cross nurse referred him to the nearest health centre, which is 15 km away, as he needs more intensive care. However, Fatima has no means of transport and getting there will be a huge challenge.

As Ouilimatou sat limply in his grandmother’s lap I proffered him my finger and he held on tightly with a strength I didn’t think he had. When children are acutely malnourished in the most extreme way they are at risk of getting ill and can have literally a few weeks to live, unless they get appropriate treatment. If they do get treatment however, it is not difficult to save their lives.

Ouilimatou would not let go of my finger and in the end I had to pull it away and all I could think was: ‘I’m sorry I have to walk away from you, but I will try and help in whatever small way I can, by telling your story.’

I hope that his grandmother found a way to get him to the health centre. I don’t know if she did.

The next day, on one of the long journeys between villages, I bought a packet of banana chips to snack on. I threw the packet, empty except for crumbs, in the bin in the room I was staying in that night along with some other rubbish.

In the morning when I checked out I returned to the room to find the cleaning boy had removed the packet of crumbs from my other rubbish and finished them off. I know this sort of thing happens on a daily basis around the world. But normally I don’t have to see it. And there is nothing like seeing someone else eating your rubbish to make you question what kind of a global food system we’ve set up for ourselves.

Right now across the Sahel, millions of people are suffering from severe hunger. The UN estimates a million children could be acutely malnourished by the summer.

There are many demands on all of our time and money. It can be particularly hard to feel connected to a crisis like this one, that’s only just emerging and has received little media attention.

And we can’t all meet children like Ouilimatou. But I did, and all I can tell you is that it made me understand how urgent the needs are in west Africa, and how important it is that we don’t ignore these people’s stories.

The Red Cross desperately needs more funds to help save lives and livelihoods in the Sahel. Please don’t wait until it’s all over the news, it will be too late.

The time to act is now.

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Tags: Burkina Faso, Mali, malnutrition, Senegal, West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

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What would you do if you saw a man walking towards you with a severed arm hanging on by a thread of skin?

You might faint. You might run away. You might even think you’d accidentally wandered onto a zombie movie set. But Stephen Leonard, who’s had first aid training, stayed absolutely calm and used his knowledge to save the man’s life with seconds to spare.

The grisly incident started when retired firefighter Stuart Frain accidentally hacked through his own left arm while using a circular saw in his remote garden.

Showing superhuman resolve, Stuart – who is also first aid trained from his fire service days – calmly held his severed limb in place and went hundreds of yards to get help.

As blood poured from the massive wound, he refused to panic and instead carried on down a road and across a canal before spotting three passers-by – including his friend Stephen, who was walking his dog.

Calling on his training, Stephen stemmed the flow of blood by using a dog lead as a tourniquet. Seconds after it was in place, Stuart collapsed. Surgeons later said the father of four was probably only about 90 seconds away from death.

Now, I don’t want to be ghoulish but just play back that scene once more with no first aid training involved. I, for one, am far from confident that Stuart would still be smiling for photographers from his hospital bed. At every stage – Stuart’s initial calmness, his knowing to hold his limb in place, Stephen’s own steady resolve and precise treatment – the two men’s first aid skills made a critical difference.

People lead such busy lives these days, and learning first aid often feels like one of those things that gets put on the ‘to do’ list without ever actually getting done. But doing a basic course takes just a couple of hours – or you can even learn in the comfort of your own home using our Everyday First Aid online resource.

It really is time well spent. And I’m sure Stuart and Stephen would agree.

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Tags: emergency response, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training

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