MSF teams had returned to Madagascar two years ago to respond to the consequences of the worst drought to hit the region in 30 years, the main priority being the diagnosis and treatment of malnutrition.
Madagascar is affected by tropical storms every year, which most recently in 2022 caused five storms and cyclones to wreak havoc on the island.
Our teams launched an emergency response, providing medical care, nutrition support, and water and sanitation services to people affected.
People waiting for medical consultations in Ifanirea health center. Ifanirea, Madagascar, January 25, 2023. © MSF
In early 2022, Médecins Sans Frontières launched an emergency response when Madagascar was struck by two devastating cyclones that caused severe destruction, damaging houses, health facilities, roads and crops.
The island of Madagascar regularly experiences extreme weather events. A few months prior to cyclones Batsirai and Emnati, people in the southern part of the country were suffering from the effects of a severe drought, which caused exceptionally high levels of malnutrition. Between the end of January and the beginning of March, the island was hit by five tropical storms and cyclones, with Cyclone Batsirai causing severe damage.
In the aftermath of the cyclones, our emergency teams began providing medical consultations in the remote coastal districts of Nosy Varika and Mananjary, running mobile clinics by boat to reach communities that had been cut off from healthcare. We also helped to reconstruct two hospitals and five health centres that had been badly damaged.
In Ikongo district, the cyclones destroyed around 80 per cent of the crops, exacerbating the dire food security situation in the area, as people who were already vulnerable lost their main source of income. Following an assessment in December, our teams started offering medical care and nutrition support to people with moderate and severe malnutrition.
In Androy and Anosy regions, in the southern part of the country, we ended our malnutrition care activities in June after observing improvements linked with increased assistance from other NGOs and better rainfall and harvests.
In Ambovombe district, we continued to work on improving access to clean water by drilling deep boreholes. We are also developing a community-based approach, working with local people to rehabilitate existing water pumps with locally-sourced spare parts, and training technicians to repair them independently.
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