A prolonged drought has left tens of thousands of people struggling to find food in southern Madagascar, authorities in the Indian Ocean island nation warned Wednesday. Local district leaders said more than 100 people had already starved to death, but the National Bureau for Disaster and Risk Management stressed it was still verifying the figure.
"According to the information available from the Androy, Anosy and south-east regions, tens of thousands of people are struggling to find food," the office said in a statement. The statement put the provisional death toll at 103, though it was unclear over which period the deaths were reported.
A reported 98 people died the Bekily district alone, where local lawmaker Jean Daniel appealed to the media for help on Tuesday, warning that the food scarcity had also displaced nearly 3,000 residents since the start of the year. The bureau's executive secretary Ludovic Christian Lomotsy told AFP that the drought began in November and that teams had been sent to the affected areas to assess the scale of the problem.
He stressed that the death toll had yet to be confirmed. "The figures we have are from district leaders," he said. "Our problem is in verifying these facts. An assessment team has been dispatched to investigate." He also said his office was working with the UN's World Food Programme. The findings are expected in 15 days, said Lomotsy. According to a statement by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) last month, "as much as 40 percent of crops in southern Madagascar are at risk" because of drought, cyclones, and a locust plague that has lingered since November 2012. "More than three-fourths of the population in the Atsimo-Andrefana and Androy regions, where maize and cassava production have declined sharply and rice output remains well below trend, currently face food insecurity," the organisation said.