More than three months after authorities in the poverty-stricken west African state suspended its activities, French aid group Medecins sans Frontieres has announced that it is withdrawing from Niger.

MSF (Doctors Without Borders) said it took the decision to pull out after its request to be allowed to resume its work received no response.

MSF was conducting nutritional programmes in the south central region of Maradi.

In July the government in Niamey suspended MSF on the grounds that it was refusing to work with public services and was guilty of the "endemic malnutrition" of children.

"As we have not received a response from Niger authorities and in view of government statements, the French section of Medecins sans Frontieres cannot help but leave the country," MSF said in a statement sent to AFP.

A leading trade union body had called earlier Wednesday for the ban to be lifted.

"This seemingly fallacious measure has unbearable social consequences for a country as poor as Niger," the federation of workers' unions in Niger said in a statement.

These included the "worsening of the situation of several thousand malnourished children" and the loss of more than 500 jobs of locally-employed staff.

MSF said its "departure provides an occasion to stress once again the need to immediately attend to the malnourished children in Maradi, to recall that it is urgent - at an international level - to recognise malnutrition as a public health priority."