March 20, 2023
Nairobi, Kenya: A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died in the longest drought on record in Somalia last year, half of them likely children.
It is the first official death toll announced in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa.
At least 18,000 people are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.
“The current crisis is far from over,” says the report, released on Monday by the World Health Organisation and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Somalia and neighbouring Ethiopia and Kenya are facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season. Rising global food prices are complicating the crisis and leading to a hunger crisis.
The UN and partners earlier this year said they were no longer forecasting a formal famine declaration for Somalia, but still called the situation “extremely critical” with more than 6 million people hungry in that country alone.
Famine is the extreme lack of food and causes a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases like cholera. A formal famine declaration means data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30 per cent of children are acutely malnourished and more than two people out of 10,000 are dying every day.
Some humanitarian and climate officials this year have warned that trends are worse than in the 2011 famine in Somalia, which killed a quarter of a million people.
Millions of livestock have died in the current crisis, which has been compounded by climate change and insecurity as Somalia battles thousands of fighters with al-Qaeda’s East Africa affiliate, al-Shabab. The UN migration agency says 3.8 million people are displaced, a record high.
A food security assessment released last month said nearly half a million Somalian children were likely to be severely malnourished this year.
This time, the world is looking elsewhere, many humanitarian officials say.
“Many of the traditional donors have washed their hands and focused on Ukraine,” the UN resident co-ordinator in Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, told the visiting US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, during a briefing in Mogadishu in January.
Read original publication at: https://www.smh.com.au/world/africa/drought-in-somalia-killed-as-many-as-43-000-people-last-year-half-of-them-children-20230320-p5ctsx.html