So far this year MSF has treated 45-48,000 (as of September 2006) children for malnutrition in Maradi region, what does this mean in terms of quantities of food?

We have a lot of stock in at the moment. We currently have in store about 180 tonnes of Unimix without sugar added, and we’re about to get 750 tonnes of rice, 112 tonnes of vegetables, 13 tonnes of sugar, 55 tonnes of oil and that’s actually only for a period of a month, so we will continue getting a delivery particularly during this peak period of malnutrition. We have nine stores and we have about 1,000 tonnes of food in stock, including 9,000 cartons of RUF in stock [150 sachets per carton so that’s 1,350,000 sachets]. We’ve got about 150 tonnes of oil in stock, so these are the sort of quantities we’re talking about to feed a lot of people.

In your view, what do you think of the efficacy and value of MSF broadening its program and doing this sort of wider distribution?

I’ve been here for a short time, only for about three months but my impression of the country and the sort of problems they have even though this year looks like it’s not going to be as bad, but we still have a lot of people in with problems.

It’s a country that’s really living on the edge of its abilities, its like a desert and by chance it happens to rain once a year, if that rain is very patchy and it rains in spots – at the moment we’ve got some places that are really green and some places that have got nothing….the people live from year to year, they grow the grain, they store the grain, and that’s all they have for the year so if they don’t get any grain then they have nothing…and they have very large families and the ground is not fertile - its like a sandy desert I sometimes wonder how they get things to grow here.

It is really living on the edge of a livable area where we’re trying to support a lot of people living in a very simple subsistence way. So if there’s any change in the weather conditions it has a dramatic affect on the food supply. Therefore for MSF being here you can see why they have emergencies and why we’re here for emergencies - there are times when the rains don’t come and they have no way of feeding themselves. I know MSF has slowed down its work here and then come back again, its because the emergency comes and goes – there doesn’t seem to be any likelihood of any change in the future, so our presence is probably going to be required for some time I imagine, unless there’s some other form of food supply, or another way of changing the food supply in order to help the people, it’s going to be a difficult time ahead for the rest of this year.

How did you become involved with MSF?

I decided it was time for a change, something I’d wanted to do for a long time and an opportunity came in my life when I was able to have the freedom to go and do something like this to help others. I’ve known about MSF for a long time.

What has been the major highlight of working with MSF?

The highlight for me has been that I have been able to directly help others, that’s a highlight, since my original career was involved in engineering so it’s less involved with people, here I can actually go out in the field and help people directly and that’s a really wonderful thing for me to be able to do.

So a highlight would be to able to help sick people which as a non medical person you are not normally able to do, but this way I can actually help sick people by building clinics, providing food, or providing water and sanitation and help them in many different ways with their health.

(MSF via China.org.cn December 3, 2008)