Malnutrition has reached crisis levels, UNICEF senior official says, calling on the international community to act.
Severe drought risks pushing nearly half of Somali children under five into acute malnutrition this year, with hundreds of thousands needing life-saving treatment, according to the United Nations, which called for urgent action.
“Malnutrition has reached crisis levels,” Victor Chinyama, head of communications for the UN children’s agency UNICEF’s Somalia operations, said on Tuesday.
“The time to act is now,” he told reporters in Geneva via video-link, cautioning that “if you wait until things get worse, or until famine is declared, it may be too late.”
As the Horn of Africa region grapples with its worst drought in decades, Somalia has been hardest hit, with the UN warning that 4.1 million people – a quarter of the Somali population – need urgent food aid.
Chinyama said children were paying the highest price in the hunger crisis, with 1.4 million of them, or nearly half of all those under the age of five, expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of the year.
“Of these, 330,000 will need treatment for severe acute malnutrition,” which can lead to death, he said.
UNICEF, he said, urgently needs $7m by March to buy the therapeutic foods needed to treat those children.
Without the additional supplies, “100,000 children with severe acute malnutrition will miss out on life-saving treatment,” he warned.
