Africa-Press – Botswana. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warns that without more international support, Somalia could face levels of hunger “unseen in half a century”.
According to UNICEF, in August alone, 44,000 children were admitted to health facilities in Somalia for severe acute malnutrition.
This means that “every minute, a child is admitted to a health facility for treatment of severe acute malnutrition,” UNICEF spokesman James Elder said by videoconference, quoted by Efe.
The spokesperson added, however, that many children cannot even reach health centers due to the country’s unsafe conditions and warned that, without increased financial support from the international community, the world will be “confronted with child deaths on a scale never before seen.” seen in half a century”.
“Severely malnourished children are up to eleven times more likely to die from diarrhea and measles than well-nourished children. With such rates, Somalia is on the brink of a tragedy of a magnitude not seen in decades,” he insisted.
After four missing rainy seasons since late 2020, and with a fifth one approaching in October, Somalia is sinking into a famine.
Across the country, 7.8 million people, nearly half of the population, are affected by drought, with 213,000 of them at serious risk of famine, according to the UN.
The head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Martin Griffiths, said in early September that without urgent action, a state of famine will be declared in the southern regions of Baidoa and Burhakaba between October and December.
According to Griffiths, the situation is worse than the last famine recorded in 2011, which killed 260,000 people, more than half of whom were children under 5 years of age.
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