"Pockets of famine" have now been reported in Southern Madagascar, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.
"We have some pockets of IPC 5 or famine-like conditions, this is basically the only - maybe the first - climate change famine on earth," said Arduino Mangoni, WFP Deputy Country Director in Madagascar, citing IPC food insecurity assessments, which are used to gauge the level of emergency aid required.
After a recent "heartbreaking" visit to an emergency nutrition centre in the south, the WFP official said that he had encountered "silence, no joy; kids just staring at you and in a situation now, really skin and bones.
"I have been working with the WFP in several countries in this continent, in several emergencies, including DRC, the Central African Republic, in Darfur, I have never seen kids in the situation they are in."
Speaking to journalists in Geneva via Zoom, Mangoni explained that the region had been affected by the most intense drought in 40 years. "The elderly people who we assist in the south, they keep telling us that this is the most severe phenomenon - the 'Kere', they call it - since 1981," he said.
In total, some 1.3 million Malagasi have been classified IPC 3, 4 and 5, according to the last available data from April. Updated IPC projections will be released at the end of the year.
"The people in IPC 3 and above, around 1.3 million as we speak today - it's higher than people in IPC 3 and above in 2016, during the El Nino driven crisis," the WFP official continued, noting that there was in fact little difference between categories three to five.
"If we look at the projections for the months ahead, the situation is very alarming", he said, noting that IPC 3, 4 and 5 trends since last year, have gone up.
"So, if we only look at IPC 4, around 200,000 people (were) in IPC 4 last trimester - the last quarter of last year. We have around half a million now, with a projection of people in IPC 5 as well (of) around 30,000, between now and the end of the year, when the new IPC results will be available."
( With inputs from ANI )
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