Burundi hunger crisis warning

Malnutrition: Children are the most vulnerable

By East Africa correspondent Cathy Jenkins

Malnutrition in northern Burundi is increasing drastically, especially among children, international doctors say.

The medical aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres, says the situation will get much worse unless more food is delivered immediately.

Camp numbers doubled in one month

MSF medical teams working in the northern province of Karuzi say they are caring for more than a thousand severely malnourished children in four intensive feeding centres, double the number they saw a month ago.

Burundi has been racked by civil war for the past eight years and recent peace efforts have so far failed to stop the fighting.

"We're seeing children coming in in a bad state, very bad state," said MSF representative Andrew Durrant.

"We've had children dying while they are waiting to come into the centres," he said.

Harvest failure

Aside from malnutrition, Durrant said children were also dying from malaria, which has reached epidemic proportions, as well as diarrhoea and respiratory tract infections.

The doctors are also distributing weekly rations to some 19,000 children whose parents are unable to feed them.

Several factors have led to the crisis, including the failure of harvests last year due to drought and late but very heavy rain at the beginning of this year.

MSF has called on the World Food Programme to increase the amount of food and seeds being delivered to the region immediately in order to avoid a rapid deterioration of the situation.

A WFP spokesman in the capital, Bujumbura, said the organisation was carrying out an assessment of needs in the province.

Burundi civilians, many of them peasant farmers, have suffered terribly in the country's eight-year old civil war, which pits the mainly Tutsi leadership and army against Hutu rebels.

The government last year signed a peace deal mediated by former South African President Nelson Mandela but the rebels have not signed.