NAIROBI, Kenya
A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid Somalia’s longest drought on record last year and half of them likely were children under 5 years old.
It is the first official death
toll announced in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa.
At least 18,000 people, and as
many as 34,000, are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.
“The current crisis is far
from over,” says the report released Monday by the World Health Organization
and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School
of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Somalia and neighboring
Ethiopia and Kenya are facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season while
rising global food prices and the war
in Ukraine complicate the hunger crisis.
The U.N. and partners earlier
this year said they were no longer forecasting a formal famine
declaration for Somalia for now but called the situation “extremely critical”
with more than 6 million people hungry in that country alone.
Famine is the extreme lack of
food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition
combined with diseases like cholera. A formal famine declaration means data
shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30% of
children are acutely malnourished and over two people out of 10,000 are dying
every day.
“The risk of famine still
remains,” the U.N. resident coordinator in Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, told
journalists on Monday.
Some humanitarian and climate
officials this year have
warned that trends are worse than in the 2011 famine in Somalia in
which a quarter-million people died.
“The death rate was increasing
as the year came to a close,” London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
professor Francesco Checchi told journalists. The hardest-hit populations are
in Bay and Bakool in southwest Somalia and displaced people who have fled to
the capital, Mogadishu.
Millions of livestock have
died in the current crisis compounded by climate change and insecurity as Somalia
battles thousands of fighters with al-Qaida’s East Africa affiliate,
al-Shabab. The U.N. migration agency says 3.8 million people are displaced, a
record high.
A food security assessment
released last month said nearly a half-million children in Somalia are likely
to be severely malnourished this year.
This time, the world is
looking elsewhere, many humanitarian officials say.
“Many of the traditional
donors have washed their hands and focused
on Ukraine,” the U.N. resident coordinator told the visiting U.S.
ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, during a briefing in Mogadishu
in January.
No comments:
Post a Comment