”THESE children are not sick,” says a nurse staffing a hospital ward in Monze, one small Zambian farming town among the many hit by famine in this southern African country.
”All of them are here because of hunger,” says Catherine Ngandu, nurse-in-charge of the children’s ward.
Ngandu refers to the weak, frail-looking children of her ward, just a few of those that have filled most hospital beds at Monze Mission Hospital, southern Zambia, about 230 kilometres from the capital, Lusaka.
Most of the estimated 250 000 inhabitants of this rural farming district are suffering the effects of the drought that has left many of them without food.
According to the World Food Programme’s (WFP’s) figures, more than 1,2-million Zambians have been affected by hunger. The crisis has been caused by drought in most areas of Zambia, or the after effects of floods in others.
”We did not harvest anything and so we have nothing to eat or feed our children,” says Jean Chimuka at the hospital where she has brought her baby for treatment.
”The sister told me that my son has malnutrition,” she says.
In Monze, she is not alone in this problem. Other parents have literally lived at the hospital since their children were admitted and put on a special nourishment diet.
”We give them porridge and groundnuts everyday,” says nurse Ngandu, while assisting a colleague to insert a drip into a wailing child, who is in tattered clothes.
”When their condition improves, we discharge them, but again they come back because they have nothing to eat at home,” she says.
The mission hospital in Monze receives an average of six malnourished children a day, according to Ngandu. The Roman Catholic Church that runs the hospital has opened a nutrition centre, where children in a critical condition are admitted until their condition improves.
A few kilometres away there are hectares of stunted maize crops, scorched by the heat of an unrelenting drought.
”This is the worst drought we have ever seen,” says Jeremiah Kasalo, co-ordinator of the Zambia National Farmers’ Union (ZNFU) in Monze. ”It has affected everyone in this town”
The Zambian government has announced it will support farmers and villagers to grow winter maize in order to meet the food deficit.
”There is no water to irrigate the winter maize,” Kasalo says.
”Besides, the exercise is beyond the capacity of most small-scale farmers.”
East of Monze, in the small town of Lusitu, almost all of some 22 000 inhabitants are without food.
”This is the most severely-hit area, probably in the entire country,” says Donald Mwandila, an official with the agriculture ministry based in Lusitu.
Outside the district administration office in Lusitu, about 200 women seek shelter from the scorching heat under a big tree. They are waiting for relief maize being distributed by the WFP.
”I have seven dependants and I don’t have any food to give them,” says 69-year-old Saline Mporamanka, who lost her sight a few years ago due to an eye disease.
Due to her disability, Mporamanka falls under the category of ”vulnerable people”, which qualifies her to receive a 25 kilogram sack of maize.
”It is very difficult here to restrict this relief food to the so-called vulnerable people,” says Edwin Hampekema, head of a committee in charge of identifying vulnerable people to receive free food.
”In the past it was easy to identify them. Orphans, widows, disabled — but now everybody needs relief food to survive this hunger,” says Hampekema.
The WFP says Zambia needs about 42 000 tons of relief food to feed the hungry but so far only 32 000 tons has been approved by donors. Only 10 000 tons have so far been distributed.
At least 33 people have so far died of starvation. – Sapa-AFP