Around 200 children have died since January from malnutrition and disease due to drought in Somalia.

July 5. (EUROPA PRESS) –

At least 200 children have died in Somalia due to malnutrition and diseases caused by the increasing drought in the country, which has left more than seven million affected and around 805,000 displaced, according to the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The agency has indicated in a report that “disease outbreaks have rebounded, with more than 5,830 suspected cases of cholera in the 24 districts affected by the drought since January”, before indicating that “eight areas face a high risk of localized famine.

“The rapid increase in humanitarian needs requires a massive increase (in international aid) as partners move from responding to drought to avoiding famine,” he said, before stressing that 213,000 people are “catastrophically food insecure.” “.

In this sense, he detailed that “the water levels in the Yuba and Shabelle rivers have fallen 30 percent below the average, which causes serious shortages of water for irrigation and other uses”, while “the migration of herders and livestock continues to increase as people compete for limited resources, potentially fueling social tensions.

On the other hand, he recalled that the UN plan to respond to the drought requires 993.3 million dollars (about 966 million euros) to give aid to about 6.4 million people, 3.9 million which have received help since January. “The scale of the response and the funding (…) is not enough to sustain the lives of those at risk,” she concluded.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, warned at the end of June that more than 350,000 children could die from malnutrition before September if the situation does not improve. “The humanitarian situation in Somalia continues to deteriorate rapidly,” he stressed.

“We anticipate that 356,000 of them may not survive by the end of September this year. Acute malnutrition is going to increase unless we ramp up our response plan significantly,” he explained.

The then Prime Minister of Somalia, Mohamed Hussein Roble, decreed a state of emergency in November 2021 and in March he called for the delivery of international aid in the face of the worsening drought in the Horn of Africa, with Somalia as the country with the most affected in the region.