International donors, including the European Union, ignored urgent calls for food aid for Niger, exposing thousands of children to the risk of dying of hunger, Reuters quoted an official at a medical charity on Friday. Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said the landlocked West African country issued a warning in November that the worst drought in years would hit food supplies for more than 3 million people, but that rich countries ignored its pleas. "We have been in an emergency situation for at least three months, and they haven't responded," said Doctor Mego Terzian, who heads MSF's feeding scheme in the southern town of Maradi. The situation in Niger highlights Africa's plight days ahead of next week's Group of Eight industrialized nations summit in Scotland, where Britain plans to put fighting poverty on the continent at the top of the agenda. "It's clear there have been deaths because there wasn't an immediate response," he told Reuters. "I don't know what happened. They knew in October or November that there would be a food crisis, but they didn't react." When asked which donors he was referring to, Terzian named the European Union -- the biggest donor to Niger -- and France, adding that other countries should also urgently increase aid. Severe drought and last year's locust invasion that swept across much of the Sahel zone south of the Sahara have devastated crops in Niger, exposing more than a quarter of the population of 12 million people to a food crisis. "The problem is that the mobilization by the international community has been slow," said Seidou Bakari, coordinator of the Niger government's food crisis unit. "We are doing what we can with what little we have." --more 1445 Local Time 1145 GMT
