A girl cooking outside Sheikh Omar IDP camp in Jowhar, Somalia, |
A senior United
Nations official says famine has been averted in Somalia for now. He
warns food shortages still loom and could result in a catastrophic
situation if international support wanes.
The United Nations
reports Somalia, for now, has averted the worst but that the country
remains fragile and famine continues to stalk its people.
The World Food
Program (WFP) country director in Somalia, Laurent Bukera, says 3.2
million people are in trouble. He says some 350,000 children are
malnourished, including 70,000 severely malnourished.
Bukera says 700,000
people have fled their homes in search of food and water, and hundreds
of thousands of livestock have died for lack of water and grazing land.
He says more than 600 people died of cholera because they were too weak
from hunger to fight off the disease.
Better outcome
Despite the bleak
picture, Bukera says aid agencies have been able to prevent the worst.
Unlike 2011, when 250,000 people died of famine, he says aid agencies,
supported by the international community, have managed to avert a
famine.
“Today, we have
jumped into the window of opportunity," he said. "We have scaled up and
not necessarily responded in a reactive manner. We have an ability to
sustain and to maintain the assistance as a community, but the risk of
halting this assistance is dreadful. The risk of halting this is
bringing us directly where we started the year into a risk of
catastrophe.”
Additional funding needed
Bukera said
the U.N. needs funding to continue providing people with essential
relief, which has, until now, succeeded in averting famine.
“At the moment, we
are in need of close to $300 million for the next six months," he said.
"Without that, we will have to drop the assistance to 2.5 million people
and that includes close to one million children and pregnant and
lactating women.”
Bukera says aid
will have to continue beyond this year as the drought shows no signs of
letting up and instability caused by the ongoing conflict with al-Shabab
terrorists remains a serious problem.
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