The United Nations has warned that millions of people face life threatening shortages of food, aggravated by the global food price crisis, in drought stricken Ethiopia, Somalia, and Afghanistan. Emergency humanitarian aid is desperately needed to avert another calamity, the UN says.
John Holmes, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said that 4.6 million people are in need of help in Ethiopia, including 75 000 children suffering from acute malnutrition. “Urgent intervention” was needed to save their lives, he said.
Sir John, who also heads the UN’s task force on the food crisis, said that 2.6 million people were in “desperate need” of humanitarian assistance in Somalia, currently affected by drought and conflict. He said that “there was a dramatic deterioration of the situation.”
After an urgent request from the Ethiopian government for food and nutritional assistance the UN’s World Food Programme said it will expand its operations to reach those affected with emergency food supplies.
“We hear the government’s plea, and we support it,” said Josette Sheeran, the programme’s executive director.
The food agency is currently providing emergency assistance to 3.2 million people in Ethiopia but said it will scale up the assistance. It added, however, that it “urgently needs additional contributions to reach all those in need.”
The agency said it will also support the Ethiopian government “in supplying emergency nutritional support to 750 000 of those most vulnerable, including children, pregnant mothers and HIV and AIDS patients.”
Sir John said that the ongoing severe drought and security issues in war ravaged Somalia had led to a vast displacement of people from Mogadishu, who were now living in camps.
Sir John, a former diplomatic adviser to the United Kingdom’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, told reporters that UN relief agencies were feeding 1.1 million people and providing three million litres of water daily, but he emphasised that “more had to be done.”
He said that attacks on humanitarian workers had become common and were making the work of reaching people in need more complicated. Such attacks were completely unacceptable and contrary to humanitarian law, he said.
“We are witnessing the worst tragedy of the past decade in Somalia,” said Pascal Hundt, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Somalia.
“The living conditions for many families are extremely difficult . . . Finding water and food for the family is a daily challenge. Shelter and medical attention are also increasingly difficult to obtain,” he said.
In addition to distributing million of litres of water each day to nearly half a million people in more than 400 locations, the Red Cross said that it had also provided one month food rations to 100 000 people and stepped up its support to Mogadishu’s main hospitals.
Since January, the Red Cross said, 1300 people wounded by weaponry had been admitted to those hospitals, a third of them women and children.
Meanwhile the humanitarian situation was also worsening in Afghanistan, Sir John said, adding that 4.5 million people there, including more than half a million women and children younger than 5 years old, were in need of extra food supplies because of the drought in the northern part of the country and a spike in food prices.
He also condemned attacks against truck food convoys near Kandahar, where much of the food had been burned.
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a709