Severe hunger is sliding toward famine-like conditions in the Horn of Africa, particularly in Somalia, United Nations (UN) agencies warn, which is the result of four years of consecutive drought that have wiped out peoples’ ability to grow the crops they need to feed themselves.
According to the World Food Program, 22 million people in Ethiopia (Kenya) and Somalia are currently facing severe hunger. According to the UN food-assistance branch (WFP), more than 7,000,000 people have been forced from their homes by hunger and the death inflicted on millions of livestock. WFP warns that these numbers will rise and conditions will continue to deteriorate as poor rainfall is predicted for the fifth straight year.
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said that millions of children living in the Horn of Africa face a catastrophe because of severe acute malnutrition. “When you have got these terrifyingly high levels of severe acute malnutrition in children — and that is 1.8 million of those children in that state right now in the Horn, 1.8 million when you have got those — and then you combine it with a simple outbreak in [a] disease like a cholera, like diarrhea, then you see child mortality rates rise at a petrifying speed,” he said. The UN agency has increased its emergency appeal by nearly $250 million from $119 million. This is in response to the increasing needs in the region.
Source: north africa post
