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Media Statement, 14th August 2006
GOAL wishes to thank the American public for their generous support
for GOAL’s work in Niger over the past year. These essential
donations allowed our GOALies (aid workers) to get essential food
and medical supplies to the starving in this east African country,
helping to ease the wrath of the famine as communities braced themselves
for another year of hunger.
In July 2005, GOAL was one of the first agencies to distribute
much-needed emergency food and medical supplies to the most vulnerable,
where drought and locust infestation left over 3.6 million of Niger’s
11.5 million people on the brink of starvation. Around 800,000 children
were at risk of severe malnutrition in a country which is ranked
by the United Nations as the poorest country in the world.
Within one week of arriving, GOAL had airlifted food and medical
supplies and implemented a life saving food distribution programme
in Abala region, where we distributed family food rations to over
9,000 people.
One of the hottest countries in the world, Niger suffers from regular
droughts.
This year, owing to a lack of rain, famine again looms – and
meanwhile bird flu has arrived to threaten the only cash crop available
to farmers.
Today GOAL is carrying out an Avian Flu sensitisation programme
which is educating approximately 100,000 people in how to deal with
the disease in numerous locations as each outbreak is confirmed.
We are also distributing tens of thousands of bars of soap and providing
a health and hygiene programme.
GOAL has provided supplementary feeding for those most at risk
- children under five and pregnant and lactating mothers - providing
extra nutrition for 3,000 people every day at GOAL feeding centres.
GOAL is also distributing small livestock – pigs, goats and
chickens - to families at risk who had to sell up everything after
the famine in a bid to survive, and plans are being laid to start
a school and latrine building programme later this year.
Over 400 pumps and 27 wells to date have been repaired to provide
clean and portable water to over 400,000 people. This reduces the
risk of water-related diseases especially amongst children, the
most vulnerable group in this crisis. A repair programme for vital
water pumps is also underway.
We have repaired and refurnished several primary schools, and distributed
soap, mosquito nets and basic medicines as well as livestock, seeds
and tools to those most vulnerable members of the population.
Once again, I would like to thank anyone who has contributed in
any way to our work in Niger, which helped GOAL to ease the suffering
of the most vulnerable.
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