Some 13 million people are at severe risk from a food crisis which is set to escalate into a full scale humanitarian emergency in the Sahel region of West and Central Africa if urgent action is not taken, international agency Oxfam warned today. The agency is launching a £23m emergency appeal to help reach more than 1 million vulnerable people across the affected countries with vital aid. Across Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and northern Senegal malnutrition rates hover between 10 and 15 percent, and in some areas rates have risen beyond the emergency threshold level of 15 percent. Over 1 million children are at risk of severe acute malnutrition. In parts of Chad some villagers have been reduced to pounding ant hills to gather grain the ants have stored. They say unless they get help they will have to abandon their villages in a month’s time. “Millions of people are on the threshold of a major crisis. All signs point to a drought becoming a catastrophe if nothin...