– Food and funding gaps –
Food insecurity is a sensitive issue in Ethiopia, which enjoys near-double-digit economic growth, but which has struggled to change its image following the famine of 1984-85 which followed an extreme drought.
“A drought like this is unheard of,” added Mohamed Aden, the leader of the community, a few huts away. In two years, three consecutive seasons of rains were abnormally low, a situation attributed to El Nino.
“At the beginning, we sold the livestock to buy food. Without help, we would have only the skin of animals to eat,” said Aden.
Children receive a bowl of porridge a day at school, and their families get wheat rations distributed by the UN, often irregularly.
Despite these efforts, malnutrition has reached grim levels: 350,000 children under five years were treated for severe malnutrition in Ethiopia in 2015, a figure expected to reach 450,000 in 2016, according to the UN children’s agency UNICEF.
In Malkashek, amidst a vast expanse of desert, the mobile clinic set up by Save the Children is always busy.
Aid worker Abd Rahman Adan measures the children to identify the most malnourished. Last month, 136 cases of severe malnutrition were registered in this district alone.
“Since the beginning of the drought, we have seen many more cases of malnutrition,” said Adan, who hands out packets of super-sweet and specially fortified peanut paste.
“Some children regain a normal weight, but others must be sent to a stabilisation centre,” he added.
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