The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) estimate that some 43,000 people, half of them children, died last year in Somalia due to drought.
“The current crisis is far from over,” wrote the authors of the report that gives official figures, for the first time, on the longest recorded drought in this Horn of Africa country, which also notes that at least 18,000 more are expected. people die from lack of water in the first six months of this year.
Carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the report was published today, quoted by the AP news agency, as saying that the situation is “extremely critical”.
Somalia and its neighboring country, Kenya, are facing a sixth consecutive year of drought.
The UN and its partners said earlier this year that they had stopped issuing a formal statement on the famine in Somalia, but stressed that the situation is very dire, with more than 6 million people starving in Somalia alone.
Hunger is classified by the UN as the result of a situation of food scarcity and a significant mortality rate due to malnutrition and hunger, combined with the appearance of diseases such as cholera.
A famine is formally declared when at least one fifth of households suffer from extreme food deficiencies, more than 30% of children are severely malnourished and more than two people in 10,000 die daily from one or more of these causes.
According to AP, some humanitarian and climate organizations have already warned that the trend is worse than that recorded in 2011 in Somalia, when more than 250,000 people died.
Millions of animals have already died in this crisis, exacerbated by climate change and insecurity in Somalia, which still faces thousands of fighters from Al-Shebab, the al Qaeda affiliate in the country.
“Many of the traditional donors have washed their hands of the problem and are focused on Ukraine,” lamented the UN resident coordinator in Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, in a conversation with the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. , during a meeting in Mogadishu, in January, recalls the AP.
Source: TSF
