NANA-HAKIMA’S limbs are barely wider than a normal adult’s thumb. Small sticks covered with loose skin, they protrude pathetically from the canvas weighing basket. The needle points to 2.5kg (5.5lb).

Too weak to cry, she stares listlessly into space as she is placed on a board and measured. Aid workers exchange knowing looks. “She does not meet the admission criteria,” one says. Nana-Hakima is too young and not yet sick enough.

This emergency centre was set up to deal with the consequences of the severe food crisis in Niger — where the United Nations says more than 150,000 could soon die — but caters only for children from six months to five years.

Nobody believes that Nana-Hakima is old enough to qualify for care. Yet her mother, Maimouna, says that she was born seven months ago, but that she could not feed her because her milk dried up.

Johanne Sekkenes, the head of the charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) in Niger, which runs the clinic, said: “We only treat children under six months if they have a medical sickness. “The best way for them to be fed is through breast feeding. In most cases, it works far better than emergency food treatment.”

Maimouna brought her daughter to the clinic because she was unable to feed the baby after she became sick herself. In a country such as Niger, officially the second-poorest in the world, such a problem can spell disaster. There are no other aid organisations or healthcare bodies to which Maimouna and her daughter can be referred.

Ms Sekkenes said: “We will do our best for them, but cases like this are difficult. We are there for a specific category — malnourished children.” She said that the world response to the crisis in Niger has “come far too late for too many”.

Niger has had poor rainfall for several years and increasingly bad harvests. Last year a locust plague destroyed crops. When heavy rains finally came, they spread disease.

Yesterday the first flight by a British aid agency left Bristol airport, carrying a Red Cross logistics team who will co-ordinate the distribution of aid due to arrive in the next few weeks.

MSF is overwhelmed with almost 1,000 new cases a week of severely malnourished children, and it operates only in certain parts of the vast desert country. The mortality threshold for what constitutes an international humanitarian disaster — two deaths a day per 10,000 head of population — was passed in April, but no one responded to MSF’s pleas for help. Ms Sekkenes said: “We have critical months coming up ahead of us, so I fear the situation will get much worse.”

The UN says 3.6 million people, including 800,000 children, face famine. The children bear the brunt of the crisis. Each day scores of mothers with dying children wait outside the centre.

A four-year-old child has streaks of blonde through her black hair, a sign of severe malnutrition. “She has not had enough to eat since last year,” an elderly woman said.

In the intensive care unit, Ousseina, a mother in her late teens, watches her daughter, Izatou, in a breathing mask. In addition to months of bad diet and diarrhoea, she contracted a respiratory disease, which appears to be getting worse.

Kate Pattison, of the British charity Oxfam, said: “The main reason for the crisis in Niger is the poor responses to a succession of appeals.

“This area of the world is notoriously difficult to raise money for. Unfortunately it is not until terrible images appear on television that people seem to be galvanised into action,” Oxfam is appealing for £1 million to help to feed about 150,000 villagers. “The other problem is that food in the market has doubled or tripled in price and people can simply not afford it,” Ms Pattison said.

A key reason for Niger’s crisis has been the focus on the country’s development. UN agencies based in the capital, Niamey, and the Government itself, failed to switch their resources quickly enough from long-term projects into emergency response, despite knowing what was happening.

A food security specialist said: “Everyone was so focused on the G8 and eliminating poverty that they just let a huge crisis develop.” Niger was one of the countries to benefit from the debt write-off negotiated by Gordon Brown on behalf of the world’s poorest countries.

Niger appealed for 80,000 tonnes of food aid in October, but received only 6,500 tonnes. The UN appealed for about £10 million of aid in May, but has so far received only about £5.5 million.

BRIEF LIVES

The country has been racked by coups and insurgency by its Tuareg population and achieved civilian rule only in 1999

Explore World News

• World Agenda

• Iraq News

• US & Americas News

• Europe News

• Middle East News

• Afghanistan News

• Asia News

• Africa News

• Ireland News

Times Recommends

• 'New York has lost its edge'
• Copenhagen will fail – and quite right too
• More than 17,000 new underwater species found