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Almost 11,000 men, women and children have been displaced by Tropical Storm Jude, which made two landfalls in Madagascar this month – a situation made even worse by extreme food insecurity, and risk of disease associated with lack of food, and storm-related chaos.
The World Health Organisation reported that as of Tuesday 18 March, 10,587 people have been displaced by the storm, which killed one person.
The Organisation also notes that some 1.9 million Malagasy people – around six per cent of the total population – are experiencing ‘high acute food insecurity’, a term which denotes their food situation is only very slightly better than a complete inability to eat enough to even stay alive.
In the country’s south and south-east, 357,000 children are suffering acute malnutrition, an ongoing national situation which significantly contributes to the extremely high mortality rate of children aged five or under in the country as a whole: 50.6 – more than one in 20 – of every 1,000 Malagasy children die before they reach their fifth birthday, compared with 37.7 per cent globally, and 0.4 per cent in the UK.
The risk of death from malaria and diarrhoea are both significantly increased by storms and flooding, because of associated water pollution, large areas of standing water, and because health centres and other medical facilities are damaged or made inaccessible by severe weather events. WHO reports that in 2023, the number of malaria cases in Madagascar exceeded 2.8m – beyond the level of a national epidemic – and from April to September 2004, 2.6m cases were recorded.
Just 12 per cent of Malagasy people have access to safely-managed sanitation services, and only 15 per cent have access to ‘at least’ basic sanitation services. Only 22 per cent of the population can regularly and reliably access safely-managed drinking water.
We talk regularly about our work, which includes improving Malagasy infrastructure to help people access hospitals, providing training, materials and a platform upon which Malagasy people can build their own innovative initiatives to produce food and improve livelihoods (and health), and provide water and water-related equipment.
We are delighted to share those initiatives and celebrate the work Malagasy men, women and children do to help and improve one another’s lives, as well as to protect the spectacular and vital ecosystem in which they live.
But we also have a responsibility to let you know about why this work is necessary: the very real, very serious challenges Malagasy people face every day.
And we have a duty to remind everyone, including governments and other decision-making bodies that it should not and cannot be the sole responsibility of organisations like ours to help people stay alive, and live decent lives.
If you can, please like and share this message, including with people – perhaps political representatives – you feel should know these things, but may not.
Whether you do so now or later today, please share this short piece with people you know, including or as well as politicians and other decision-makers.
