Within moments of arriving at the clinic Dr Morou had located the relevant register, flipped to the right page and found Saminou’s details. Saminou Laoualy, admitted on September 9 2010, then aged 23 months, suffering severe acute malnutrition and diarrhoea, stabilised and discharged two weeks later, home to his village of Kalgo. He’d been saved.

Saminou at the medical clinic

When I last wrote, I said that Niger felt, at times, like being in the apocalypse. It felt impossible; the challenges were too great, the resources too few. Once more Dr Morou had worked his magic and guided a desperately sick child away from death back to his family.

We jumped back into the car, spirits high, and continued the search for Saminou.  Several hours later, up dirt tracks, down sandy roads, through mud villages and following numerous directions, we arrived in Saminou’s village. Armed only with some poor quality prints, screen grabs from the Sky website, we asked the crowd that gathered around us; did they know this boy? Yes they nodded, eager to please. Could they take us to his mother? Yes, they could, they said. One thing though, they added. That boy is dead.

Saminou died. He left the clinic well, and he died one week later. He died from disease, not from a lack of food. They don’t know what disease.

We went to the family home. Saminou was taken to the clinic by his grandmother as his mother, Rashida, was pregnant at the time. “How was she?” we asked her husband. Hiding, he almost smiled, she’s scared of the white people. And the new baby?

Buried. Just weeks after Saminou died, his mother gave birth again. But the baby was born dead. In the two months we’d been away the tiny, terrified, 18-year-old girl who was finally coaxed from hiding by her 23-year-old husband, lost both of her children.

Looking at his mother’s young, beautiful and broken-hearted face, there was nothing I could say. I don’t know what to say now either. Logically, I already knew that this is what we might learn. The statistics are there. In Niger one in six children die before they are five years old. I had already found two other children, Rahina and Tsiharou, who had also been treated at the clinic, had also been close to death, and found them both alive and well. If I looked for four more, I would probably learn that one child hadn’t made it. That one turned out to be Saminou.

And the baby that never lived? The statistics were there as well. In 1998, the World Health Organisation found that 2.3% of children in Niger were born with a low birth weight. In 2005, Niger suffered a food crisis. In 2006, the number of children born underweight rose to 20.3% — it increased nine times. The food crisis in 2010 affected twice as many people as in 2005 and Saminou had lived in one of the hardest-hit areas.

We gave Rashida the pictures we had of Saminou, wishing desperately that they were better, that they’d been taken when he was well so she could remember her son healthy, that there was some reassurance we could give that things would change. But we couldn’t.

Niger has had help in 2010. There has been an emergency and an emergency response to match. Saminou suffered in the food crisis, but the emergency treatment was there and it was not the food crisis that killed him. With no clean water, no latrine, and a mud hut as a home, a life lost to disease is one lost to poverty.

Niger is the least developed country in the world but it receives about half of the amount of overseas development aid received by Zimbabwe, a quarter that’s given to Mozambique and a sixth of the amount allocated to Ethiopia. It needs investment to bring everyone here to a place where they can work, stay healthy, feed themselves, and where 18-year-old mums like Rashida don’t lose two children in two months.

Sky News are telling Saminou’s story over Christmas. You know the ending already, but please watch it anyway.

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Before the rain makes the situation better, it makes it worse. Between the week I arrived and last week, the number of children being brought to Save the Children when they were sick rose from 2,000 children per week to over 15,000.

Malaria has erupted, with 1.5 million cases recorded this year in Niger compared to 1 million by this time last year. The worst floods in 80 years have hit the capital, Niamey, and the worst in 30 years hit the former capital, Zinder. Over 50,000 animals perished. Around 9,000 families have been made homeless. There have been outbreaks of cholera in all three of the regions where Save the Children works, and nearly 800 cases nationally. There have been threats against foreigners, seven people have been kidnapped, another person tragically executed.

Every week there’s been something new to deal with. There are days when it’s felt like being in the apocalypse, and the idea that a few people could do anything to make this better just seemed farcical.

But then when you focus on the positives you realise how many of them there are:

• Dr Morou, working every single day at the clinic with children close to death but always ready with a grin when you arrive.
• International coverage of the crisis by reporters from BBC World and Today, Sky TV, ABC, and more, who have work so hard to get this in the news.
• The generosity of people in the UK who have given their money to a country they’ll probably never visit and may never have heard of before. Thanks to them we have £150,000 more to spend then we did when I arrived.

Djamila playing with my sunglasses and posing for a photo

And the children can tell you that, despite the appalling numbers, there’s a lot to be happy about. Djamila, who earlier this year was begging on the street is now back in her village and hoping to return to school. Tsiharou, who struggled to breathe without oxygen three months ago, is now healthy and at home. Rahina, who was barely conscious when she was brought to us, is now getting regular medical treatment in her village and plays with her family.

And now the rains have ended. The harvest has begun; in most places it’s a good one. Rates of malaria are starting to drop. Malnutrition rates will soon start to drop too, as children who were beginning to suffer are saved from becoming critically ill with the new abundance of food, and critically ill children are nursed back to health. The price of cereals in the market are lower than the average for this time of year. Animals are fattening.

This is the time when the real work begins though. Niger is the least developed country in the world. There’s one hospital in the entire country. Families think going hungry for four months is normal. People’s lives are threatened because it doesn’t rain. People’s lives are threatened because it does.

It’s not the apocalypse here though. It’s nothing like it. It’s poverty. We can’t make the rain fall where and when it’s needed, but we can stop it mattering so much.

Building families’ resilience so they’re not living such a marginal existence will mean that when another harvest fails — and it will — they can cope. We need to invest in families now to put back what has been lost during the crisis. People are in debt; they’ve sold everything for food. And we need to invest systems too — in better access to clean water, health care, farming techniques, micro-credit schemes and schools — so that in the future, Niger’s population don’t suffer.

But, after just ten days of treatment, his health had improved so much that he was able to feed, smile and play.

At the time, his mother Salmey told us: “When we first arrived, he was barely even conscious of what was happening, but now he’s doing much better and he is getting his health back.

“Before, I couldn’t even smile. When I brought him in he was suffering so much that I couldn’t smile. But now he’s getting his health back, and I’m smiling again.”

This week we went to see Tsiharou in his village. It took three hours to drive there from the nearest city, first along a tarmacked road, then a gravel road, then a sand path that weaves over dunes through the slender ripe millet, and then a short walk to a clearing with three mud brick houses and a yard.

We sat together with Tsahirou and Salmey, his mum, on a blue mat under a shady tree. The fragile, skeletal baby had been replaced by a healthy round little boy. It was wonderful to see.

“When I went there to the Aguie health centre Tsiharou didn’t know where he was, what was going on,”  Salmey told me. “He received treatment for many things. I stayed there with him for 26 days.

“Since he left the health centre he has had no problems. He is healthy, but each month I go to the health centre at Aikawa. I get medicine for his cough. His cough has never gone away completely; he coughs more after the rain. Yesterday he had a fever, the first time since we left the health centre, but it’s gone away today.”

Overall, it’s been a good growing season. Crops are ripening, the landscape is green. In some places the harvest has already started.

Salmey and Tsiharou are surrounded by strong tall millet and sorghum stems; their food for the coming year. The rainy season in Niger is coming to an end, and the drier air should give Tsiharou the opportunity to recover completely.

But the problems in Niger are far from over. Around 7 million people have suffered from the lack of food this year – an emergency of that size doesn’t go away overnight.

And the crops in Salmey’s field won’t be enough to see her through until the 2011 harvest. But now, even while there’s still vulnerability, there’s also health and hope in this village.

It’s a good reminder to stop and think about the 200,000 children who have needed emergency care this year and who have received it, and to smile at the thought of the vast majority of those children who are now able to play with their mother under a tree.

You can help us ‘press for change‘ to tell world leaders that it’s now or never to stop children dying like they promised the world’s poorest in 2000.

Find out more about Niger’s food crisis

In Niger, it rains heavily and -  if you’re poor, and you probably are – it’s economic breakdown. The price of your house crashes (as your house collapses). Your savings account is wiped out (as your livestock drown). You lost your job last October (when the last harvest failed) and your new enterprise just fell through (as newly-planted crops are submerged).

You have no house, no job, no money, no food and no means of getting any. And then your baby, who has been growing weaker every day, becomes sick, and you can’t afford the treatment.

This nightmare is unfolding right now for families across Niger. The failed harvest, rising food prices, and subsequent crisis have already caused malnutrition levels to rocket past emergency thresholds. Now the rains are compounding the situation by spreading diseases that contribute to malnutrition, and which malnourished children are too weak to fight off. It’s a viscous circle, a downward spiral.

Last week, 2,400 children were brought to Save the Children with severe malnutrition.

That’s 450 more children than the week before.

800 more children than five weeks ago.

Almost 1,800 more children than in the last week of January.

This emergency hasn’t gone away. It’s still six weeks until the next harvest and it’s too soon to know how successful that will be. While 110,000 families have already been affected by floods, in other places families are suffering drought, in other places they’re fine. It’s erratic, it can change, but even if the harvest is successful this emergency won’t just stop. 

7,100,000 people here have spent six months without enough food. Imagine if every person in Scotland didn’t have enough food for six months. Imagine what that would do to productivity, health, small businesses, social and family relations. Imagine the riots, the outcry from permanently hungry people who were educated and outraged and wealthy enough to have their voices heard. Now add another 2 million people to that, and imagine how loudly the Nigeriens would be shouting if they could.

And a poor harvest last year doesn’t only mean hungry people this year. It also means a lack of good seed to plant now, as the good seeds were used up last year. It means animals – savings accounts – have been without fodder for a year and their value has plummeted. It means 141,000 children have been so hungry and so ill for so long that they’ve needed medical care. For some parents it’s meant the death of their child. 

This crisis won’t go away overnight and it won’t be solved with a few weeks of good meals. Families in Niger need food and health care now, but they also need support to help them recover from this crisis. That recovery work has to start when the harvest comes, in just six weeks, which means funding has to be made available now to prevent the impact of crisis from being prolongued.

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Find out more about Niger

It’s a single room. It’s surprisingly light, with a sand floor, a bed, a cot with a blue mosquito net hanging above, and a painted cabinet full of pots and pans.  It’s plain and simple, a piece of sacking covers the window, but there’s also bright wallpaper, beige with bright red and pink art deco flowers.

This is Abuda’s house. Abuda is twenty-seven and she lives here with her seven month old son, Darrida. We’re in the village of Farountsoho, about 50 km away from Zinder, the second largest town in Niger.

Abuda has so little. Her kitchen is an open fire in the yard outside, her bathroom is an area beside the house shielded from view by a screen woven from leaves; her other set of clothes hang by the bed. But she’s house proud. On her one thin shelf some empty soap boxes have been saved and displayed as decoration, the beds are made, the sand floor is clear of debris and pebbles.

And Abuda is being the best mother she can be. The mosquito net is above her baby’s bed, not hers. She explains ‘I borrowed it from my neighbour when I was pregnant’. She’s breastfeeding her baby, she knows it’s the best way for him to be healthy. She makes and sells bean cakes by the road to bring in some extra income despite the fierce desert heat.  And she’s planning her future income too. Abuda borrowed a goat from a neighbour to rear; “I will keep this goat until I have the goat’s baby. Then the owner will give the baby to me.”  She’ll then be able to start her own flock.

Women like Abuda live all over Niger. With almost no education, support, or resources they’re still coming up with intelligent ways to support themselves and their families. They’re enterprising and they’re finding their own ways out of poverty, but they live in one of the hardest places in the world.

I met Abuda just over a week ago. It’s possible the roof of her house has collapsed since then, destroying the few things she owned, drowning the baby goat, and leaving both Abuda and Darrida exposed to disease.  Heavy rainfall across Niger has already waterlogged and dissolved homes, flooded fields, killed over 50,000 animals.

I don’t know if that’s happened to Abuda. But if it has, how can she recover? Not only would she have lost the little she had, she will also have gained debts – the goat, the mosquito net. How could she cook bean cakes on an open fire in an open yard in a storm? Who would stop to buy them?

Families like this need support. They’re trying hard, but with so little they’re still vulnerable. One heavy storm can destroy their lives. Save the Children are working in Abuda’s community. She has access to free healthcare at the clinic five kilometres away. Our staff know the poorest families, they visit every few weeks to monitor their situation and see what help they can give.  And, come October, we’re planning on following Abuda’s lead by giving goats to the poorest families on the understanding that the first kids go to another poor family in the village so everyone benefits.

Find out about our work in Niger

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Habiba and her family

As we  drove out to visit our programme in Zinder, Niger this week, we came to a sudden stop in the road to let some camels cross.

The camels and their herder were followed shortly by a procession of tall men with cattle, goats, sheep, then a mother, a son, two donkeys and five daughters. The mother, Habiba, is the only woman in this group, the only female older than her 11 year old daughter Zara.

Habiba’s youngest child, aged just seven months, clung to her back. She had the yellowed, brittle hair of a malnourished child. The next youngest girls clung to the top of their donkeys, also showing sings of malnutrition. The eldest girl, Zara, worked the flock and tended her sisters with startling efficiency. The entire group – people and animals – were desperately thin.

This family are part of the Fulani tribe that roam around northern Africa with their livestock. Her family was heading south-east, they’d heard there was food for the animals about 167km to the south-east of Zinder. They were happy to make the long journey on foot to find out.

The Fulani tribe travel all over Africa with their herds, from Egypt to Sudan, Ethiopia and Chad, to Niger, up to Libya, Algeria and beyond. They are some of the hardest families to reach in a food crisis.  They are almost constantly moving to find better pasture for their families and preserve their wealth and livelihoods.

Despite their hard lifestyle and harsh environment, research by Save the Children has found that the pastoralist groups, like Habiba’s family, are generally better nourished than agriculturalists who rely on the land for their livelihood.

But Habiba told me that this had been the hardest time for her family in years. There hadn’t been enough food anywhere and some of their livestock had died. She explained: ‘There is no food here in Niger. We’re going to Nigeria where it’s green’.

Later that evening a massive thunderstorm erupted, and the rain has barely stopped since. Houses across Niger are collapsing under the weight of the water. Families are now at risk of water borne disease and pneumonia. The newly-planted crops are submerged.

Unless the rain becomes more regular soon, another year’s crops may fail. If that happens, this food crisis – already affecting more people than any other food crisis this century – is going to escalate even further leaving pastoral and agricultural families across Niger even more desperate.

Find out more about what we are doing in Niger

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But there’s also a food crisis affecting more than half of the country’s 14 million people. It’s currently listed as the least developed country in the world, one of the poorest, and one in six children here won’t live to see their fifth birthday.

So what’s the party for?

This food crisis here is extreme. Tens of thousands of lives are at risk. Around 400,000 children face severe malnutrition this summer. The rainy season has started, bringing malaria, cholera, and flooding. 7.1 million people are already affected by the lack of food – that’s more than in any other food crisis in the world this century.

But this situation is also temporary. The longer term statistics for Niger tell a different story.

Look at population growth. True, Niger has one of the fastest growing populations in the world. But people here are living longer – the average life expectancy has risen massively from 38 years in 1970 to 51 years in 2008. The death rate has almost halved – 15/1,000 people in 2008 compared with 27/1,000 in 1970 – and the birth rate is falling too, although not at the same rate. But these are all good signs of progress.

Then let’s focus on children. It’s true that one in six children here don’t live until they’re five. That’s appalling. But it’s also true that in just 18 years, the number of children living to celebrate their fifth birthday has doubled in the country.  And the biggest improvement has been among the most vulnerable children, those under the age of one, who are now more likely to reach their first birthday. Another good sign of progress.

Then there’s politics. Again, it’s true there was a coup just five months ago. But the current government has promised to restore democracy, they have scheduled elections for early in 2011, and in March 2010 they called for international assistance for the food crisis. This public recognition of need has created an enabling environment for humanitarian work and it’s welcome.

This is a country that is progressing, but which has been hit hard by changes in climate and rising food prices, neither of which are in Niger’s control. Families here are suffering now.

A few days ago at our clinic for severely malnourished children in Aguie I meet a mother who initially refused to go to the clinic with her baby. She’d already given him up for dead, couldn’t believe that a child that sick could live. For three days Save the Children staff went to see her in her village, trying to make her come to the clinic to be with her child, but she wouldn’t leave the rest of her family and the start of the precious rains for a child she believed would never recover. Three days of intense care later he regained consciousness. A week later he was smiling at his now-laughing mother.

This baby has a better chance in life than most other children born in Niger in the last 50 years. He’s likely to celebrate 100 years of Niger’s independence in 2060. He’s more likely to go to school than his parents, his children are more likely to live. He has a more hopeful future than any generation of children since Niger’s independence, and we can’t allow that to be damaged by a short-term food crisis. That means we need to act now.

Find out what we’re doing in Niger to help children affected by the food crisis

They are queuing in the half-light to receive a measure of therapeutic milk for their starving baby in the clinic behind.

Inside the clinic lie rows of sick children in white cots. There is a faint sound of crying but the cries are weak whimpers, not the demanding yells of hungry, healthy children.

The nurses move around carefully, weighing children, checking fevers, administering drugs. The shutters are down to defend the room from the dust and rising heat outside.

This is the CRENI, the intensive care clinic for children who are severely ill with malnutrition and who are also suffering from an infection or disease that they are too weak to fight off.

It’s in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, where the sun is fierce at this time of year and where the rains are just starting, bringing new life and hope but also mosquitoes, cholera and floods.

It’s where Aloubacar brought her son three weeks ago.

Dehara is four. He looks about six months old. He’s severely malnourished and he has malaria. He lies on his little white bed, his head lolling over, too weak to lift it, or to focus on me beside his bed, or to move. He’s been here for three weeks now. He’s not getting worse but it’s not clear that he’s getting better. There’s tenderness and concern in the nurse’s face as he takes a blood sample, the only thing that made Dehara move while we were there and he was crying.

Aloubacar brought her other children with her to the clinic. Where else could they stay? The family of four have been living here for three weeks, her pretty nine-year old daughter Jamila looking after the baby Nona Madya.

The last three weeks have seen the best rain in over a year, but while Aloubacar cares for her sick child she’s missing the start of the planting season.

If she doesn’t plant seeds, she won’t have crops, if she doesn’t have crops, the family won’t have food or seeds for the coming year. But she can’t leave her son.

Aloubacar’s story isn’t unusual. Life is springing up all over Niger as the thunderstorms kick-start life into the red sand, but the people who are too weak or sick or trying desperately to care for their children can’t use this precious rain to secure their food for 2011.

This is why we need emergency health care for children like Dehara now. He needs drugs, doctors, nurses, a beds, a mosquito net.

We need support for Aloubacar, Jamila, Nona Madya, and all the other mothers staying with their sick children. They need clean water, cleaners and food.

Aloubacar was able to get to the clinic for care. Niger is a huge country. There are children out there in the desert who are dying, but whose parents know the nearest help is a week away on foot in the blistering sun.

We need community workers, cars and fuel to physically go out, find these children, bring them back and save their lives.

And we need to help families in the longer term. They need food now, but they also needs to be protected from having to sell seeds and tools for just a few days of food.

If we don’t the poor rain in 2009 is going to cause families pain and poverty for years to come.

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We’ve been worried that this would be a silent emergency where few people knew or cared about children in Niger, but this week alone people have been in touch from Austalia, Korea, Italy, Spain, Canada and the UK – it’s great that this crisis is making it onto the world’s media agenda.

Here in Niger, it looks like the food crisis is going to get worse before it gets better. The latest research into nutrition has shown that thousands more people are suffering from a lack of food shortages than we originally thought. The rainy season has started — it rained last night, we’ve had thunder storms, the air is humid — and the forecast is that the rains will be good this year. People are cautiously optimistic that the end is coming into sight.

Even so, it’s going to be several months until the first crops have grown and are ready to be harvested. Until then families still don’t have enough to eat. Desperate people have had to sell their land, tools, and animals to buy food so, even with the rain, they won’t be able to grow food and rear animals in their usual way without help to replace them first.

But we have a team here, working in three of the five worst-affected regions. We’ve got doctors, nutritionists, food, medicine… we’ve treated 36,000 children for malnutrition already but there’s just so much more to do.

Find out more about what we’re doing in Niger

7.7 million people are going hungry. 127,000 children under five years old have been admitted to hospital for malnutrition-related problems since the start of the year. That’s like having a city the size of Oxford full of no one but starving babies and toddlers. It’s terrifying.

This hasn’t just been caused by the erratic rainfall last year, although it hasn’t helped. The major problem is that globally the price of food has risen by about 20% each year since 2007. Food is available in Niger, mainly imported from the neighbouring countries, but the poorest, most vulnerable families just can’t afford to buy it.

The reasons for the price increase are still under debate – increases in bio-fuel production,international trade agreements, rising fuel prices. Whatever the combination of factors, it’s fairly unlikely that the poorest people in the world are responsible. They don’t use crude oil products, don’t use bio-fuel, and don’t trade internationally. But they’re the ones suffering the effects.

Find out more about Niger

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