The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Wednesday of the “devastating” impact of the drought in Ethiopia and warned that ten million people, including 4.4 million children, urgently need humanitarian aid.
“The impact of the drought on children is devastating,” said UNICEF Director of Emergency Operations Manuel Fontaine, adding that “in the Somali region alone, more than 900,000 people have been displaced“.
“Drought does not only mean lack of water,” he warned.
Manuel Fontaine stressed that due to the drought “children go hungry and thirsty every daybeing forced to walk kilometers in search of food and water “and many times they have to drink from contaminated water sources.”
“This leads to malnutrition and other deadly preventable diseases, such as diarrhoea,” he added.
UNICEF underlined that Malnutrition rates are rising “at an alarming rate”adding that in the four affected regions – Afar, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities and Settlements (SNNPR) and Somali – an estimated 600,000 children will need treatment by the end of the year.
In this sense, the UNICEF official highlighted that in the Somali region there was a 43% increase in hospitalizations for severe acute malnutrition of children under 5 years of age in May 2022 compared to May 2021.
This climate-induced crisis is a malnutrition crisis for children and not just in Ethiopia but across Africa,” Fontaine said.
The director of Unicef Emergency Operations also highlighted the recent contribution of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) of 200 million dollars (about 195 million euros) to the organization’s operations on a global scale.
“This funding will significantly increase our nutrition response around the world,” he said.
UNICEF also touched on the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which it believes will “push more people to the brink and increase food insecurity with rising fuel prices and reduced availability of wheat imports.” .
In the case of Ethiopia, the country imports 67% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.
This means that the prices of cooking oil, bread and wheat flour are reaching new records in local markets and even families not living in a humanitarian crisis cannot meet their daily food needs,” he said.
UNICEF has urged international donors to raise 65 million dollars (about 63 million euros) to respond to the drought and help more than two million people in vulnerable situations in the affected areas of Ethiopia, in addition to the general humanitarian appeal of 351 million dollars (about 342 million euros).
Source: Observadora
