In the Horn of Africa, drought threatens millions
By Aaron Maasho; Editing by George Obulutsa and Tim Pearce
12 July 2011 BISLE, Ethiopia (Reuters) – Four-year-old Hussein Musa sits propped against his mother in a thatch-roofed hut, in a section cordoned off under a scorching sun to mark those with the worst symptoms. “They say he is severely malnourished. He is also suffering from fever and diarrhea,” said Mako Wabari, his 35-year-old mother. “We are relying on food aid. We lost 40 goats and sheep, it is the worst drought in three years,” Mako added, before wiping darkened sweat off her forehead with her bright, billowing dress. Behind the gated health post, a group of elders sit cross-legged on the ground, spreading out their hands in prayer for rain, as a mirage sparkles in the distance. In Bisle, a remote settlement in Ethiopia’s Somali Region, residents say it is a year since they have had a drop of rain, and their livestock — the area’s vital source of income — are dwindling in number as the months go by. Across the Horn of Africa, a fierce drought is forcing more than 10 million people to rely on emergency food aid, up from a previous forecast of six million, according to the U.N. World Food Programme. Drought and fighting in Somalia mean about 2.85 million people — a third of the population — need humanitarian aid, while some 4.5 million out of a population of 80 million are affected in Ethiopia. In Kenya, the region’s economic powerhouse, some 3.5 million are at risk of starvation, the United Nations says. “The situation across the Horn of Africa this year has really deteriorated in terms of food security and that has caused a deterioration in nutritional security as well,” Kristen Knutson, spokeswoman for the U.N.’s humanitarian affairs office in Ethiopia, told Reuters. Much of the region relies on the October-December rains, but they failed completely last year. Rainfall during the other vital season — March to May — was late and erratic this year. […] “The arid and semi-arid lands, the Sahel in Africa – they are the kind of ‘canary in the coalmine’ for climate change,” David Wightwick, regional response leader at Save the Children UK, told Reuters. “If temperatures rise even slightly, if rains falter slightly, then what you are going to have is a disproportionate effect on the population.” […] “We have to take the impact of climate change more seriously,” the U.N.’s top aid coordinator, Valerie Amos, told journalists during a visit to Bisle on Saturday. “As droughts are becoming so much more frequent, we have to be a lot more innovative and creative in thinking about what some of the long term effects might be,” she said. […]
