Scale up strategies to mitigate effects of drought, Save the Children

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“This is a particularly high number for Kenya. Those children need help and they need help now. These children we are talking about are hungry, they are only getting a meal a day at best. Some do not get any meal. This means their immunity is extremely weak making them vulnerable to diseases
like diarrhea, cholera, measles and pneumonia,” she said with a sense of urgency.

Somalia drought situation

Hassan Noor Saadi CEO Save the Children Somalia confirmed that the drought being experienced on Somalian soil is on a higher scale as compared to the one in Kenya.

“There are places in Somalia where it has not rained in the past 2 years.

That has led in a crisis in middle parts of Somalia. In 2011 there was a big famine in this county that caused 260,000 deaths. The country is facing a similar situation at the moment,” he noted.

Mr. Noor added that currently 6.2 million are being affected by this drought.

“Out of this figure there are 3.2 million people who are in crisis and emergency situations. 1.4 million children are suffering from
malnutrition. Assistance should be provided soon to them as it is now a matter of life and death now,” he said.

He added that half of the country’s population depends on pastoralism as a means of livelihood and in the last few months around 50 per cent -90 per cent of livestock has been lost.

“Capability of this community to cope with the crisis has been taken away. The situation gets further complicated when we get into some of the conflict affected areas in particular South and Central Somalia. There are 2 million people living in those two regions and they the ones tasked with having most difficulty accessing humanitarian aid,” Mr. Noor noted.

He said that this has led to large displacements and in only 2017 almost 750,000 people have been displaced and these people have migrated to big cities like Mogadishu.

“This exposes additional challenges to humanitarian community in terms of
reaching out to these people. Estimates show that almost every day 7,000 people are leaving their houses to these big cities with the hope they will get some assistance,” Mr. Noor remarked.

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