JOHANNESBURG, 27 December (IRIN) - Madagascar has called for international aid to help stem a nutritional emergency that has left thousands of children malnourished in the vulnerable south.

"Madagascar has sent a message, through the president [recently re-elected Marc Ravalomanana], and called on the international community to help us," Anbinintsoa Raveloharison, Director of the National Nutrition Office (ONN) of the Ministry of Health and Family Planning, told IRIN.

The latest Situation Report by the UN's Resident Coordinator, Bouri Sanhouidi, said, "the Province of Tulear [Toliara] is suffering from 'kere', loosely translated from Malagasy as a situation similar to a famine."

Last week an assessment team from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) determined that inadequate seasonal rain at the beginning of 2006 had resulted in significant crop failure and food insecurity in the area, affecting approximately 300,000 people.

According to Misbah Sheikh, Chief of Media and External Relations at the UN's children fund in Madagascar, "28 communes of three regions - Anosy, Androy and Sud-Ouest - are affected", and only 3 in every 100 rural households in the country have access to safe water, with the situation worse in the south.

"Whenever there is a nutritional emergency, it's the most vulnerable that are affected and particularly children," she said. "An estimated 5,178 children under five are malnourished and an additional estimated 534 are severely malnourished."

Sanhouidi said southern Madagascar was plagued by chronic food insecurity, which was "an annual phenomenon and, despite this recurring natural event, few long-term solutions have been implemented - the agricultural economy of this region is predominantly weak, limited to subsistence-based agriculture and raising livestock, and highly vulnerable to natural or economical distortions."

Meanwhile, as Madagascar's cyclone season gets underway, Cyclone 'Bondo' hit northern Madagascar, leaving one person dead and affecting 304. "This is the irony of Madagascar - there are floods with the cyclone in the north, and in the south people suffer as a result of drought," Sheikh commented.

Bondo has lost strength as it moves towards the southwest of the island, but a new cyclone is expected to hit eastern Madagascar later this week.

tdm/he

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