Somalia faces famine on a scale last seen half a century ago, the United Nations has said. Somalia has suffered four successive failures in its rainy seasons since the end of 2020, and there are fears that a fifth failure is now underway.
“Things are bad and every sign indicates that they are going to get worse,” James Elder, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesman, explained.
In August, 44,000 children were admitted to health establishments with severe acute malnutrition, a condition that means a child is up to eleven times likelier to die from diarrhoea and measles than a well-fed counterpart.
“That is a child per minute,” said Elder. “A child whose mother has walked days to get her child to help. A child whose body is fighting to survive. A child whose life hangs in the balance.”
An estimated 7.8 million people – roughly half of the population – are now affected by drought, of whom 213,000 are at high risk of famine.
“When people speak of the crisis facing Somalia today, it has become common for frightful comparisons to be made with the famine of 2011, when 260,000 people died,” Elder added. “However, everything I am hearing on the ground – from nutritionists to pastoralists – is that things today actually look worse."
“Famine is projected in Baidoa and Burhakaba districts in Bay Region between this month and December if humanitarian assistance does not reach people most in need.” warned , Jens Laerke of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Somalia faces worst famine in half a century, UN warns | Hunger News | Al Jazeera
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