The child malnutrition rate in drought-hit areas of eastern Ethiopia has surpassed 20% and two out of every 10 000 children are dying each day, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The report, the first nutritional study completed in Ethiopia’s worst-hit Somali region since the effects of the drought have taken hold across East Africa, found more than one in five children to be severely malnourished.
“The prevalence of global acute malnutrition among the surveyed population was estimated at 20,1% which can be considered ‘critical’,” said the study by the United States and British aid agency Save the Children.
Out of every 10 000 children under five, 2,4 are dying daily and 32,8% of them, nearly one in three, are ill, mainly with life-threatening diarrhoea and at risk of contracting measles and other diseases, it said.
“The under five mortality rate and the prevalence of illness indicate the presence of high risk of child illness and mortality among the population in the surveyed areas,” the report said.
The survey of more than 900 children in two areas of Somali state followed a dire warning from the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) that 1,5-million youngsters are at risk in countries across East Africa, including Ethiopia.
It said about eight million people in total are threatened with drought-related malnutrition and potential famine in four nations — Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. Of those 1,75-million are in Ethiopia.
“There is a potential for widespread disease, greater malnutrition and the displacement of significant numbers of people,” Unicef chief Ann Veneman said in a statement released in Geneva.
In Addis Ababa, Unicef’s Ethiopia country director Bjorn Ljunqvist said the figures for Somali state were “alarming” and urged that assistance to drought-stricken areas be boosted immediately.
“These rates are alarming,” he told Agence France-Presse. “When you have general malnutrition rates over 15% it is alarming. These rates call for immediate action to be taken.”
As in the other three nations, livestock-dependent nomadic pastoralists have been hardest hit with mass deaths of cattle, goats, sheep and camels, Save the Children said.
“As a result, households’ income source decreased and as a result children are becoming malnourished,” the report said. – AFP