Hunger crisis threatens half of Somalia's young children: UN

Severe drought risks pushing nearly half of Somali children under five into acute malnutrition this year, with hundreds of thousands needing life-saving treatment, the UN warned Tuesday, calling for urgent action.

"Malnutrition has reached crisis levels," said Victor Chinyama, head of communications for the UN children's agency UNICEF's Somalia operations.

"The time to act is now," he told reporters in Geneva via video-link, cautioning that "if you wait until things get worse, or until famine is declared, it may be too late."

Somalia has been hardest hit as the Horn of Africa region grapples with its worst drought in decades, with the UN warning that 4.1 million people -- a quarter of the Somali population -- need urgent food aid.

Chinyama said children were paying the highest price in the hunger crisis, with 1.4 million of them, or nearly half of all those under the age of five, expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.

"Of these, 330,000 will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition," which can lead to death, he said.

UNICEF, he said, urgently needs $7 million by March to purchase the therapeutic foods needed to treat those children.

Without the additional supplies, "100,000 children with severe acute malnutrition will miss out on life-saving treatment," he warned.

- Recruited -

Severe acute malnutrition can cause stunting and wasting and leaves children so weak that they become far more vulnerable to diseases.

For "a severely acutely malnourished child, or severely wasted child... the risk of them dying from diseases such as measles or diarrhoea is 11 times higher than for a well-nourished child," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said.

That is a particularly concerning statistic, since the drought has also sparked a severe water crisis in Somalia, and in turn more disease outbreaks.

Some 7,500 measles cases were registered in the country in 2021 -- double the caseload for 2019 and 2020 combined, while around 60,000 people are at risk of contracting diarrhoeal diseases, including cholera, UN figures show.

The drought is also spurring a migration crisis, Chinyama said.

Around 500,000 people have left their homes in search of food, water and pasture since November, adding to the 2.9 million who were already displaced inside the country.

Drought and displacement also increase other risks for children, including from armed groups in Somalia, where the Al-Shabaab Islamist militant group controls swathes of countryside.

In 2021, 1,200 children -- 45 of them girls -- were recruited and used by armed groups, while another 1,000 children were abducted, according to UNICEF.

"In many instances, these children were victims of multiple violations," Chinyama said.

In all, UNICEF has said it needs $48 million to respond to the crisis in Somalia this year. So far, it has received only $10 million.

Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation

Tweet

Thanks for being there;
We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain.

With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords.

Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year.

If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.

SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter
$5+ Billed Monthly

paypal only

SpaceDaily Contributor
$5 Billed Once

credit card or paypal

Climate-boosted drought in western US worst in 1,200 years
Paris (AFP) Feb 14, 2022
The megadrought that has parched southwestern United States and parts of Mexico over the last two decades is the worst to hit the region in at least 1,200 years, researchers said Monday. Human-caused global heating accounts for more than 40 percent of the dry spell's intensity, they reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. "The turn-of-the-21st-century drought would not be on a megadrought trajectory without anthropogenic climate change," lead author Park Williams, an associate professor a ... read more