A devastating health emergency looms in Kenya where an explosion of post-election violence has killed hundreds and displaced a quarter of a million others, British charity Merlin warned yesterday.
Although the government and aid groups are struggling to deliver aid to displaced civilians mainly in the country's western region, the charity warned that humanitarian supplies were dangerously low.
"Food and clean water supplies are now running dangerously low, especially in and around [the western city of] Kisumu," Merlin's Country Director in Kenya Wubeshet Woldermariam said in a statement.
"People are being forced to drink unsafe water, risking diarrheal diseases, infection and dehydration. The longer the crisis continues, the greater the risk to people's health," he said.
"If peace isn't restored within the next few days, disease outbreaks and severe dehydration are very real threats," the charity warned.
At least 361 people have been killed in poll-related violence since election day on Dec. 27, according to a tally compiled by AFP from hospitals, police and mortuaries.
The UN estimates that the chaos may have displaced 250,000 Kenyans, some 100,000 of whom need immediate help in the western Rift Valley region.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR has pledged to provide aid.
Local aid workers fear an outbreak of diseases in crowded make-shift camps in schools, hospitals and churches, most of which were still out of reach owing to their inaccessibility or safety concerns.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said lack of security as well as roadblocks set up by vigilante groups have barred food trucks from the port city of Mombasa from reaching their destination.
"At the moment we have not had a problem in food distribution but if this situation continues then food will not get delivered on time," a WFP spokesman said in a statement.
The government has instructed the military to escort trucks delivering supplies to avoid highway ambushes.
The UN Children's Fund said many hospitals in the disaster zones were in need of medical supplies to treat a wide range of injuries and conditions.
"Supplies and staff are needed to treat victims of shooting, burning, beating, slashing and trampling," said Sara Cameron, the agency's communication officer in Kenya.
The agency is working to reduce malnutrition among the displaced in the worst-affected areas and setting up so-called "safe spaces" for displaced mothers and children.
Meanwhile the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that about 5,000 Kenyans have fled to Uganda, where they live in schools, churches and with relatives while an unconfirmed number have also left for Tanzania.
On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross appealed for 15 million Swiss francs (US$13 million) from donors to deal with the unprecedented crisis in the east African nation.
Violence exploded in Kenya last Sunday after the country's electoral panel declared President Mwai Kibaki winner of hotly contested Dec. 27 elections, but his main rival, opposition chief Raila Odinga, said the result was fixed.
Kibaki on Saturday offered to form a national unity government in a bid to defuse the violence, but Odinga stood by his demands for him to resign to pave the way for dialogue.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late