Period covered by this Operations Update: February to October, 2012. This update represents a six-month summary of the operation (cumulative narrative and financial) and beyond.
Appeal target (current): CHF 2,239,273 Appeal coverage: 87%
Appeal history:
The Operation Update n°1 was published on 25 May and provided information on the food distribution to malnourished children in the region of Kanem
The Emergency Appeal was launched on 25 February for CHF 2,239,273 to assist 123,000 beneficiaries
Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF): CHF 231,613 was initially allocated from the Federation’s DREF to support the national society to respond. The DREF fund enabled food distribution to malnourished children and their families in the regions of Kanem.
Summary:
The food insecurity situation in Chad has been critical since 2008, with consistently low rainfall that has also affected the agricultural production during this period. The DREF operation launched on 20 December 2011 enabled immediate response to the needs of 5,000 malnourished children and their families in the severely affected regions of Lac and Kanem. This set the initial groundwork for scaling up of operations culminating in the subsequent launch of the Emergency Appeal on 25 February 2012, to assist 123,000 beneficiaries in the two regions where acute malnutrition rates had risen above the emergency threshold of 15 per cent. The appeal strategy was based on the twin-track approach aimed at meeting the immediate food needs of the most vulnerable households with blanket feeding, alongside concurrent longterm interventions such as support of improved agriculture production, through agro-pastoral strengthening activities, income generation and other livelihoods projects.
Following the launch of the Emergency Appeal, a field level agreement (FLA) was signed with WFP to provide beneficiaries with food assistance for their short term emergency dietary and nutritional needs. This would be achieved through blanket food distribution to malnourished children aged 6 to 23 months and breastfeeding mothers and partial general food distribution in the regions of Kanem and Hadjar-Lamis. Incidentally, a number of planned activities within the timeframe of this agreement were delayed because of the newly-directed focus on blanket feeding food assistance to reduce dietary and nutrition needs during the emergency phase the newly added region of Hadjar-Lamis.
More delays were experience until the arrival of international staff in June, to support the Red Cross of Chad (RRC). IFRC deployed a head of operations, a food security delegate and a regional disaster response team (RDRT) member with logistics expertise. Locally, recruitment took place for a national food security coordinator, three regional coordinators and 12 regional supervisors (four supervisors for each of the three regions).