Hunger kills 900 in Karamoja, Uganda - leaders

KAMPALA, Uganda

The suffering and pain in Karamoja, Uganda’s north-eastern pastoralist region, needs no hyperbole.

It is visible in massive crop failures as a result of a long dry spell. The scorched gardens and pasture mean limited or no food for both humans and their animals. Yet, cattle keeping provides main livelihood.

The strong heat wave has terminated torrents of water that gurgled from Mt Moroto, turning the valley of life it coursed through into a shallow sand bed and killer of aquatic life. And crops in gardens are sterile when sorghum should be fast-maturing this season. 

Eight in every ten households here are either critically food-insecure or simply food-insecure, according to United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) and government of Uganda statistics, meaning they have no food to eat or limited stock, barely lasting a month to three.

Dr Paul Lokubal, a Chevening alumnus and current doctoral student of population health at the University of Oxford, hails from Karamoja and on July 14 set up a GoFundMe account to raise Pounds20,000 (Shs96m) to feed afford “4,000 people one meal a day for a month”.

“[Many] people have died of hunger in the last two weeks alone”, he wrote, “Another 23,000 children face severe acute malnutrition and could die in the following days if they do not receive emergency help.”

By 7:36pm, 88 donors had raised £4,203 (Shs20m) in support of the online campaign.

Back in Dr Lokubal’s Karamaoja birth place, multiple leaders, citing compilations by local governments and the domestic spy agency, ISO, said over 900 Karimojong, mainly children and elderly, have succumbed to hunger-related diseases since February, this year.

The death toll is rising, but help, including the government’s 790 metric tonnes of maize flour and beans trucked to the famine hotspot last week, have been slow to reach the most in need and too small a handout.  

Among the most at risk are underfed HIV and Tuberculosis (TB) patients on strong daily drugs, but lack proper dieting, let alone food to eat in sufficient quantities. 

But there is another layer of trouble, a recurrent one --- cattle rustling. 
Insecurity caused by these raids blamed on local warriors prompted a counter-operation by UPDF, Uganda’s army, which says it has taken 400 suspects into custody since May 16. 

Many of these are energetic youth whose vibrancy powers Karamoja, meaning their arrests spell additional doom for families where they were bread winners.

“It is hard to explain our situation to outsiders until they visit our settlements,” says Mr John Robert Adupa, the chairperson of Lotisan Sub-county.

Mr Adupa told this publication on Tuesday that in Lotisan alone, 22 people have died due hunger-related diseases.

“There is barely anything to harvest, crops have withered, people need food from the government, but it’s yet to come. Now some have resorted to boiling skins and hides of goats, cows as food,” he explained, sounding distraught.

Kotido, Kaabong, Moroto, Napak, and Amudat are districts in Karamoja. Their leaders last Thursday that each of the districts had received 100 tons and 50 tons of posho (maize flour) and beans, respectively, out of the government donation. 

In Atedeoi village, Lotisan Sub-county, Moroto District, children with distended bellies, which health professionals attribute to malnutrition, gaze at passerby with inquisitiveness. They talk nothing, only blank stares.