The drought in the Horn of Africa could lead between January and June to 135 deaths a day in Somalia, the Somali health ministry, WHO and the UN agency UNICEF warned on Monday. It is the worst drought to hit the region in 40 years.
The World Health Organization (WHO) had previously warned that nearly 100,000 people in Somalia were facing catastrophic levels of hunger. According to the study published on Monday, between 18,100 and 34,200 people could die from the consequences of the drought in Somalia during the first six months of this year.
Extreme weather conditions could have caused 43,000 “additional deaths” last year, compared to the drought of 2017, adds the study, which specifies that half of the victims would be children under five years old.
This document was commissioned by the UN children’s agency UNICEF and WHO and produced by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London.
Race against time
“We are in a race against time to prevent deaths and save lives,” said Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Representative in Somalia. “The cost of our inaction would mean the death of children, women and other vulnerable people.”
Five consecutive rainy seasons marked by severe water scarcity in parts of Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia have killed millions of livestock, destroyed crops and forced over a million people to leave their homes in search of food and water.
Meteorologists expect a sixth rainy season to also be sorely lacking in water, heightening fears of an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe on the horizon, particularly in Somalia.
This country was already hit by a famine in 2011, which killed 260,000 people, more than half of whom were children under the age of six, in part because the international community did not react quickly enough, according to the UN.
In 2017, more than six million people in Somalia, more than half of whom were children, needed assistance due to a prolonged drought in East Africa. But early humanitarian action averted a famine that year.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp