ETHIOPIA: THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN STILL SUFFERING FROM MALNUTRITION AND MORE THAN 12 MILLION PEOPLE ARE IN DIRE NEED OF FOOD AID

Record ID: 544714

  • Title: ETHIOPIA: THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN STILL SUFFERING FROM MALNUTRITION AND MORE THAN 12 MILLION PEOPLE ARE IN DIRE NEED OF FOOD AID
  • Date: 17th July 2003
  • Summary: ANOTHER SICK AND WEAK CHILD AT THE THERAPEUTIC FEEDING CENTRE WITH HIS FATHER NEXT TO HIM
  • Embargoed: 1st August 2003 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: LEKU, ZIWAY, NAZARETH AND ADDIS ABABA; ETHIOPIA
  • Country: Ethiopia
  • Topics: International Relations,Disasters,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVA172S75RZ5VHGME61XD26QTV32
  • Story Text: Thousands of children across Ethiopia are being admitted to therapeutic feeding centres and aid agencies say 90 per cent of the children are suffering from severe malnutrition. The aid organisations also say that more than 12 million Ethiopians are in dire need of food aid and this number could increase if long rains expected to fall between June and September in the country fail.
    In the Ethiopian village of Leku, nearly, 300 kilometres away from the capital Addis Ababa, malnourished children sit and cry away in pain. Their mothers look more helpless than their own children. They are a reflection of the hunger that is sweeping across various parts of Ethiopia.
    Their wait for food has resulted in this ill-health. Many of the children are underweight and are suffering from lack of food.
    "More than 90 per cent of the children have oedema and this is a very severe state of malnutrition. These children, if they are not treated immediately, they will die within the week," says Hedwig Deconinck, from Save the Children USA.
    At the therapeutic feeding centres, the children are given milk supplement which contains lots of vitamins, until they are able to stabilise.
    Ayele Kayamo and many other children are underweight.
    Their mothers are sad that they have not been able to help their children in the best possible way.
    Their country has suffered greatly due to lack of rain in the country hence no food. All they do is rely on food aid, which takes a long time to trickle to communities like theirs.
    At another Therapeutic Centre in a different part of the country, 10-month old Kufa Faro may not survive another day.
    He has no strength to suckle anymore. His mother weeps because she is afraid she will loose her child.
    Doctors are also afraid that the child arrived the therapeutic feeding centre a little too late.
    Many other children in this tent are also on the intravenous drip, to help their conditions stabilise.
    But a shocking sight is that of 10-year-old Madina Nurafu.
    She is wasted and one cannot imagine she is 10. She cries and her weak voice fills the tent, where many other critically malnourished children are being attended to.
    "Most of them are severely deteriorated - their health status, their nutritional status - and when they came to us, they are almost on verge of death, and here we are doing our best," says an Ethiopian Doctor, Antenanse Enyen.
    But various aid agencies are trying to help. The United states of America has so far made a contribution of over one million metric tonnes of food aid, to help the starving population in Ethiopia.
    "We are seeing increasing emergence of hotspots - people that are severely malnourished, where gum rates are exceeding 15 per cent. We are having to open more and more feeding centres - therapeutic feeding centres. When someone reaches the stage of a therapeutic feeding centre, it means we are a little to late - okay - because the food has not gotten out into the communities at that point in time. So that means to us that the targeting is either wrong or the beneficiary numbers are wrong," says the Director of USAID, Mary Lewellen.
    And, as Ethiopia's population continues to suffer, food aid continues to trickle slowly to the people in different parts of the country.
    It is also feared that the country may face another drought due to a possible failure of rain this year.
    Ethiopia nonetheless is happy about the support that it has received as emergency food, to stave off a disaster it says could be on the scale of the 1984 famine that killed almost one million.
    "On the whole, the response has been quite generous and as a result, we have on the whole avoided both mass deaths that many people feared would be the case. The most important issue however is the long-term issue that of resolving the underlying causes of the famine, and that's the issue on which we are working together with the donors," said Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
    Food, or the lack of it, has a long-established role in the country which has had war, insurgencies, disease, a growing tide of refugees and a shifting array of extremist groups.
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