UN News Service (New York)
12 May 2006
With more than 9 million people, over half of them children, in crucial need of aid in drought-stricken East Africa, United Nations agencies are appealing for more than $70 million in urgent donations to scale up life-saving operations in the region.
In five drought-stricken Horn of Africa countries, where 8,780,000 people, 4,445,000 of them children, are seriously affected, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) faces a $54-million shortfall as it continues to scale up its operations in the region.
"Malnourished children still face death across the Horn of Africa," UNICEF said in its latest update on the situation in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. "Children are the most vulnerable group, especially malnourished children and their malnourished mothers."
In nearby Tanzania, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) is urgently seeking $16.6 million to feed 565,000 people. "With more than half a million people in dire need, we really need funding now for this new emergency operation," WFP Country Director. Patrick Buckley said.
Rain is falling in East Africa, but too late to halt much of the devastation of six months of severe drought. Millions of pastoralists have seen their livelihoods wrecked. Tens of thousands of children are so weakened as to be at serious risk of dying, it added.
UNICEF's operations cover feeding programmes, measles and vitamin A campaigns, water and sanitation programmes, child protection, and education. Children are at most risk to opportunistic diseases, such as measles, yet vaccination rates for the disease in drought areas are well below the 95 per cent required. Studies suggest that more than 20 per cent of child deaths in Ethiopia's last drought in 2000 were linked to measles.
Even in non-drought situations, development indicators in the affected areas remain low. The pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities within each of the countries tend to be among the least served by basic services.
Kenya leads the Horn of Africa list with 3,500,000 people overall, 1,775,000 of them children, in need of humanitarian aid, followed by Ethiopia (2,600,000; 1,330,000), Somalia (2,100,000; 1,050,000), Eritrea (500,000; 261,000) and Djibouti (80,000; 39,000).
In Tanzania, drought has hit more than 85 per cent of districts.
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