United Nations World Food Program - Feeding the Hungry in Madagascar

I have just a few minutes, before the UN World Food Program (WFP) truck is coming to pick me up and bring me to their field site...

I spent the morning at WFP Madagascar country HQ, speaking with the Country Director, Deputy Country Director, Public Information Officer and Program Manager, learning more about their programs, successes, failures and challenges of working in this country.

Where do I begin? Mada is one of the most natural-disaster-prone areas of the world, and has suffered from seven debilitating cyclones in just the last six months alone, wiping out coastlines, crops, infrastructure, and villages, leaving entire communities displaced and in need. Most of these communities are tribal, and very disconnected from anything having to do with the hustle and bustle of Tana. Unfortunately, Mada's history has reflected much of the same, with 40+ cyclones, typhoons, etc. in the last few decades - and climatological research seems to indicate that these natural disasters are only on the increase.

So, much of WFP's work focuses on EMOPs (emergency operations), coming in to simply stabilize and support the immediate needs of the people. They work primarily in the south and southeast, but fly all over island, here and there, whenever a disaster strikes, prepositioning food in secure warehouses, which allows for quick and easy distribution when needed. Shockingly, the Mada government seems to have no emergency disaster plan whatsoever, so the most vulnerable people are left to depend on international organizations, who basically run around, putting out fires. With the sheer volume of disasters, I don't know how they have the resources or capacity to get ahead of anything, and focus on other development issues. But they do...

WFP also administers several school feeding operations, providing meals to students in 200+ schools around the country. This is often the only meal that these kids are getting in a day, which serves as an incentive for parents to send their children to school. These programs are supported by capacity building in the local communities, to develop more aggressive and successful agricultural practices, infrastructure building, etc. so the communities will eventually be able to take over their own programs independently (assuming they aren't wiped out by a cyclone)...

And next, Food for Work programs, where families contribute one family member to help on development and infrastructure programs (building roads , terracing farmland for cultivation, etc.), and receive rations large enough to feed their entire family.

This afternoon they are bringing me to a public health clinic in one of the poorest slums of Tana, working with AIDS and TB patients. WFP runs this clinic in cooperation with the World Health Organization, and UN-AIDS. WFP's primary function in this clinic is to provide adequate nutrition to patients taking anti-retrovirals and other strong, lifesaving medications. Remember, our meds indicate "take with food or milk" and even if we don't, it's safe to assume that we've eaten in the last 12 hours. So many of people simply don't have enough to eat, and are suffering from such acute malnutrition, that when they take these medications, their bodies can't metabolize them properly and the meds literally kill them. A lot of WFP's work in sub-Saharan Africa and other areas ravaged by the AIDS pandemic, focuses on the role of nutrition in the treatement of HIV/AIDS.

Ah, I love a relaxing vacation.
More later, when I return from the clinic...