Since March 2021, MSF teams have been responding to an exceptionally severe malnutrition crisis hitting people of Madagascar’s southern region.
On Monday June 21, MSF opened a 40-bed inpatient therapeutic feeding centre (ITFC) in Ambovombe hospital. The teams worked for a month and a half to build a new facility in order to scale up inpatient treatment for severely malnourished children suffering from medical complications.

One week after its opening, 28 children have already been taken care of in the inpatient nutritional centre.

According to Madagascar’s nutrition surveillance system and its various partners, 74,000 children across the southern region of Madagascar are acutely malnourished, 12,000 of whom have severe malnutrition – an increase of 80 per cent compared to the last quarter of 2020. Almost 14,000 people in Amboasary, one of the worst affected districts, are now considered to be starving.