By Admin
The worst drought in four decades is reportedly raging through the Horn of Africa.
World Food Programme said up to 20 million people in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia were at risk of starvation by the end of the year.
It said Somalia was bearing the brunt with half of the population now hungry adding that hundreds of thousands of people were abandoning their homes in rural Somalia and heading to camps for the internally displaced.
Their fields were bare, crops have failed, dead livestock were strewn along the roads and famine was looming.
“This is the worst drought in the last decade,” experts said.
There were thousands of children who were unaccompanied in the camps. Older siblings have taken the role of caregivers, as their fathers have gone to towns to look for food, and the mothers were stuck in hospitals where the rate of severe malnutrition was at an all-time high.
Deaths were now being reported. In one centre in Baidoa, at least 26 children died between May and June, according to records.
“Some of the girls I used to play with are still alive. Some died, while others have moved to the capital city, Mogadishu, where they work as house helps,” 13-year-old Fardhosa told BBC in a makeshift hut at the camp in Baidoa.
The charity, Save the Children, said they were seeing an increase in psychosocial stress among children and their caregivers.
“Negative childhood experiences result in… children needing psychosocial support… Parents say children are becoming violent and aggressive,” said Mahamoud Hassan, the organisation’s Somalia Country Director.
(GT)
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