A series of crises has paralyzed Haiti, trapping the vulnerable population in a cycle of increasing desperation, without access to food, fuel, markets, employment and public services, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warned Friday.FAO) and the World Food Program (WFP).
In Cité Soleil, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, hunger has taken a catastrophic turn, reaching level 5, the highest in the Integrated Classification of Food Security Phases.
A record 4.7 million people suffer from acute hunger, of which 1.8 million are in an emergency phase and, for the first time in Haiti, 19,000 people are in a disaster situation.
Food insecurity has increased worryingly over the last three years in Cité Soleil. Currently, 65% of its population, especially the poorest and most vulnerable, suffer from high levels of food insecurity. 5% of them require urgent humanitarian assistance.
The UN agencies explained that the increase in violence in that neighborhood of the capital, with armed groups competing for control of the area, has prevented its residents’ access to work, markets, and health and nutrition services. Many have had to flee or hide in their homes.
A doctor measures the arm circumference of Ibrahim, an eight-month-old boy suffering from malnutrition, at a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that some 100,000 children under the age of five suffering from severe acute malnutrition in Haiti are particularly vulnerable to the cholera outbreak in the country.
UNICEF noted that severely wasted children have weakened immune systems and are three times more likely to die if they contract cholera, requiring urgent action to contain the disease.
The first case of the current cholera outbreak in Haiti was reported on October 2 last. Since then, 357 suspected cases have been reported, more than half of them in children under 14 years of age. Children ages one to four are at greatest risk.
The number of poor children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is increasing
A woman asks for money, while carrying her son in her arms, in the streets of Chisinau, Moldova. Many children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia now live in poverty.
The war in Ukraine and rising inflation have pushed an additional four million children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia into poverty, a 19% increase from 2021, according to a new UNICEF study.
According to the UN body, children in the 22 countries of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region bear the heaviest burden of the economic crisis caused by the conflagration in Ukraine. While they make up 25% of the population, children make up nearly 40% of the 10.4 million people who have fallen into poverty this year.
Russia accounts for nearly three-quarters of the increase, with an additional 2.8 million children living in households below the poverty line. Ukraine is home to half a million children who fell into poverty, the second largest proportion, followed by Romania, with an additional 110,000 children.
UNICEF warned that advancing poverty could result in an additional 4,500 children dying before their first birthday, and that learning losses could be equivalent to an additional 117,000 children dropping out of school this year alone.
Health budgets in jeopardy in Africa due to crisis debt
Budget allocations to health have been dramatically reduced in African countries due to high levels of indebtedness.
The COVID-19 and the debt crisis, now compounded by the fallout from the war in Ukraine, have dealt an unprecedented setback to global health and jeopardized the global response to AIDS, with the risk of 7.7 million deaths from HIV-related causes by 2030, warned the Joint UN Program on HIV-AIDS (UNAIDS).
in a new studyUNAIDS indicated that the debt crisis and the war in Ukraine have deepened the fiscal crisis of developing countries, seriously undermining their ability to invest in health.
He also highlighted that the countries most affected in economic terms by COVID-19 are the most indebted countries and also the most affected by HIV. In 2020, for every ten dollars available, four dollars were spent on debt service and only one dollar went to health.
The UNAIDS Executive Director said the response to the pandemic was inadequate as vaccination was very limited in developing countries and there was no permanent debt relief and no fresh resources in countries with severe health and social problems. . “This time there can be no mistakes. The multilateral system cannot fail again,” said Winnie Byanyima.
