Up to 6 million children under the age of five are at risk of malnutrition in Ethiopia because of rising grain prices and the failure of rains, the UN’s children agency, UNICEF, has warned.
Dry spells across much of the country since last September have led to big food shortages, humanitarian agencies say. In recent weeks the effects have become visible, with increases in cases of the condition kwashiorkor and severe acute malnutrition, particularly in southern Ethiopia, where 126,000 children require urgent therapeutic treatment.
John Holmes, the UN’s undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, said he was deeply concerned by Ethiopia’s food insecurity, the worst since the drought-related humanitarian crisis in 2003.
PHOTO: AP
With crops expected to fail following a poor rainy season this spring, which in good years allows farmers to produce a second crop, the situation is expected to worsen.
“We will need a rapid scaling up of resources, especially food and nutritional supplies, to make increased life-saving aid a reality,” Holmes said.
Samuel Akale, a nutritionist with the government’s disaster prevention agency, warned that the situation would get worse.
“The number of severely malnourished will increase, and then they’ll die,” he told reporters.
Ethiopia has made gains in reducing dependency on food relief and has cut its infant mortality rate by a quarter over the past five years. But with poverty still widespread and the country host to 80 million people, the second-largest population in sub-Saharan Africa, it remains deeply susceptible to the weather’s vagaries.
The World Food Programme (WFP) says that in addition to the 8 million people supported by a long-term food safety net system, at least 3.4 million people are in need of emergency humanitarian aid. It appealed for an urgent response from donors, citing a 183,000-tonne food shortfall, which would cost US$147 million to bridge.
UNICEF is asking for US$50 million, but there are concerns that the international focus on disasters in China and Myanmar will see the appeal fall short. An earlier request for US$20 million to fund its emergency nutrition program raised US$1 million.
The worst hit areas are the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s Region, the Somalia region and Oromiya, where the number of severely malnourished children admitted to one UNICEF-supported hospital increased from 26 to 61 over the past week.
Livestock losses are also growing.
There is also increasing concern about the northern regions of Afar, Amhara and Tigray, where crop failure is expected following disappointing rains.
Rising global costs of fuel, fertilizers and staple foods are compounding the problem, especially for the poorest Ethiopians.
In the six months to February, the price of corn and sorghum nearly doubled, the WFP said, while wheat jumped by 54 percent.
“The food supply in markets is limited and many people cannot afford to buy what is needed for their families,” WFP spokesman Peter Smerdon said. “They are having to resort to extreme survival strategies.”
Nearby countries are experiencing similar difficulties in coping with drought.
About 600,000 people in Uganda’s eastern Karamoja region are receiving food aid, while more than 2 million Somalis, many of them displaced by war, are reliant on humanitarian relief.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS