3News NZ
Thursday, August 04, 2011
The Horn of Africa is experiencing one of its worst droughts in 60 years - and among the hardest hit are its children.
At the International Red Cross hospital at the Dadaab refugee camp, in Kenya, the wards ring out with the sound of children crying.
Yet John Kiogora, a doctor there, says they're the "lucky ones".
Thousands of Somali refugees have fled famine and trekked for kilometres to get to what is the world's largest refugee camp in search of relief.
But many children were never selected to make the journey, Kiogora explains, and some of those who did died en route.
He and colleagues say they have managed to stabilise some of the worst severely malnourished cases they have admitted.
But aid groups estimate more than 11 million people in the Horn of Africa need food aid.
And the situation could get worse, they say.
Among those in Dadaab on Wednesday was Swiss President Micheline Chalmy-Rey, who was making a 24-hour trip to Kenya to see the effects of drought for herself.
She said that, though much had been done to help those fleeing Somalia for refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, it wasn't enough.
"The international community has to do more in order to save the lives of these people and in order to allow them to live, to have a good life, to have a future," she said.
Across the border in Somalia, the situation remains desperate: thousands have travelled to the capital Mogadishu to seek aid.
At the Banadir hospital, women wait in the scorching heat to get food and medical care for their children: the youngest are fed intravenously.
But their numbers are rising every day.
The UN declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones on Wednesday, expanding the area where the highest rates of malnutrition and mortality are taking place, including the refugee camps in the capital of Mogadishu.
The UN's food arm said that famine is likely to spread across all regions of Somalia's south in the next four to six weeks. Famine conditions are likely to persist until December, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said.
Across Somalia, 3.7 million people are in crisis, the UN says, out of a population of 7.5 million. The UN says 3.2 million are in need of immediate, lifesaving assistance.
The UN said the prevalence of acute malnutrition and rates of crude mortality surpassed the famine thresholds in areas of Middle Shabelle, the Afgoye corridor refugee settlement and internally displaced communities in Mogadishu.
The UN last month said two other regions in Somalia were suffering from famine.