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[NIAMEY, May 23 2006] - Malnutrition has retarded the growth of half the children in Niger, with food shortages compounded by the world's lowest rate of breastfeeding for babies, U.N. Children's fund UNICEF said on Tuesday. Niger, lying at the heart of West Africa's arid Sahel region south of the Sahara desert, suffers chronic food shortages and last year a plague of locusts combined with a poor harvests left an estimated 3.6 million people short of food. "Around 50 percent of children under 5 years suffer retarded growth. Barely 1.2 percent of babies are exclusively breastfed until 6 months, which is the lowest rate in the world," UNICEF resident representative Aboudou Karimou Adjibade told reporters. UNICEF promotes breastfeeding as the best and safest nutrition for babies, and says that worldwide, if every baby were exclusively breastfed until 6 months, an estimated 1.5 million lives would be saved each year. UNICEF data show most children in Niger receive a combination of breast milk and water, other liquids or foods -- which can expose them to infection given high rates of diarrhoea and poor access to clean water in many areas. Experts in Niger cite a range of factors, including the custom in some communities of not breastfeeding the firstborn child, and other traditional beliefs. Adjibade, speaking at the launch of a UNICEF report on child nutrition, said the organisation was conducting research into the underlying causes of childhood malnutrition, including socio-cultural influences and attitudes towards breastfeeding. He said Niger was among a handful of countries in the region which had failed to improve child nutrition levels or had seen them get even worse since 1990. "The countries who have not progressed or who have regressed in relation to 1990 are Burkina Faso, Niger, Central African Republic, Cameroon and Sierra Leone," he said. A joint study by the Niger government and UNICEF found an average of 15.3 percent of children were suffering acute malnutrition, with the far north being the worst hit region. The government has drawn up a 10-year plan for 2005-2015 to improve healthcare including child nutrition. It said at the weekend it would provide free healthcare to children under 5 years, as well as family planning facilities, in an attempt to halve maternal and newborn mortality by 2010.