In CAR, desperation is growing for women who are unable to feed their babies | Hunger News

A two-year-old boy cries as his mother gently weeps him on a scale at a hospital in northwest Central African Republic, where there is a severe food shortage.

Her 22-year-old mother says: “There is no food at home.

“I can tell he’s not well because he cries all the time and doesn’t play anymore.”

Civil war has been raging since 2013 in a poor country of nearly five million people, evicting thousands of people from their homes and creating a major humanitarian crisis.

The president announced that he would stop fighting in October after a terrorist attack, but because of insecurity in the northwest of the country, many are still struggling to feed themselves there.

He stated: “It is associated with poverty and insecurity. This conflict prevents people from growing crops and makes it difficult to make money.

At a hospital in Paoua, a town some 300 miles[500 km]northwest of the capital Bangui, desperate mothers have brought their children for testing.

Many expect pasta sachets to be donated by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP).

In the middle of the crowd, a half-hungry girl is crying, but her mother’s understated milk is no longer sufficient.

The nurse measures Severine’s arm 12 – 1.5cm (0.6 inches) in diameter, and is much smaller for a baby her age.

Modeste Loyo Motayo, who manages hospitals in a town of 47,000 people, says hunger is the most common disease among patients.

Fruits and vegetables are scarce

WFP estimates 42 percent of Central Africans, on average, struggle to get enough food on a daily basis, a percentage it predicts will increase next year.

But the food crisis has grown in the northwest of the country bordering Chad, where tensions between terrorists and government forces are still high.

In the Ouham-Pende region around Paoua, 61 percent of the population is suffering from severe food shortages, says UN Food Agency Mahoua Coulibaly.

Today, Paoua’s largest market is very small. Fruits and vegetables are a necessity because they are not safe to consume.

Abas Mahamat, a member of the Paoua trade union, stated: “Everything is becoming more and more expensive.

“How do people get it?”

In December 2020, terrorists launched a new coup against the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadera in the run-up to the presidential election.

Touadera won the by-elections and has now regained control of the region – United Nations and France say with the help of Wagner Russia’s Russian security forces, a claim that Moscow denies.

But last month, fighting in the northwest of the country killed at least 30 people and two soldiers.

Officials said the violence was part of the 3R group, which last year controlled two-thirds of the country.

The insurgents were scattered in the bush, forcing many rural people to flee to Paoua or other towns.

In the Paoua area of ​​Bimbi, about 20 refugees are eating a small meal – a small cassava leaf soup.

Simplice Massemba points to a cramped room where she sleeps with seven other 3R after her attack on her village.

They killed the occupants and took away our homes. We fled with nothing, ”he said.

Like the other 100 people displaced from the area, they have found refuge with a host family, but they say that there is not enough room for all of them to flee.

“Many sleep on the couch outside,” he says.

More than 600,000 people have been displaced as a result of the conflict in the Central African Republic, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA said.

On the other hand, Michel Gotto, a 77-year-old village chief who was ousted by terrorists, is struggling to stand up.

He states: “I was out in the fields with my children when the 3R terrorists came to harass us. “I just want to go home.”