MOGADISHU, Somalia — Somalia’s prime minister says 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region as a severe drought threatens millions of people across the country.
It was the first drought-related death toll announced by Somalia’s government since it declared a national disaster on Tuesday. The United Nations estimates that 5 million people in this Horn of Africa nation need aid, amid warnings of a full-blown famine.
STRINGER/AFP/Getty ImagesSomalia's newly appointed Prime Minister Hassan Ali Kheyre, also spelt Khaire, talks on the phone in Mogadishu on February 23, 2017. Kheyre, a former aid worker and oil executive, was named prime minister of Somalia by the country's new President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed.
Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire spoke Saturday during a meeting with the Somali National Drought Committee. The death toll he announced is from the Bay region in the southwest alone.
Somalia was one of four regions singled out by the U.N. secretary-general last month in a $4.4 billion aid appeal to avert catastrophic hunger and famine, along with northeast Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. All are connected by a thread of violent conflict, the U.N. chief said.
AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, FileIn this Saturday, Feb. 18, 2017 file photo, displaced Somalis who fled the drought in southern Somalia sit in a camp in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia. Somalia's prime minister said Saturday, March 4, 2017 that 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region as a severe drought threatens millions of people.
Thousands have been streaming into Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in recent days in search of food aid, overwhelming local and international aid agencies. Over 7,000 internally displaced people checked into one feeding centre recently.
About 363,000 acutely malnourished children “need urgent treatment and nutrition support, including 71,000 who are severely malnourished,” the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network has warned.
Andrew Renneisen/Getty ImagesSahro Mohamed Mumin, 30, looks at her son Abdulrahman Mahamud, 2, who was diagnosed with pneumonia and severe malnutrition, at a government run health clinic on February 25, 2017 in Shada, Somalia. Mumin's family lost all of their animals due to drought and had traveled 150 kilometers in search of a better situation. Somalia is currently on the brink of famine with over half of the country's population facing acute food insecurity according to the United Nations. The intensifying crisis has humanitarian groups racing to stop a repeat of 2011, in which 260,000 people died of famine throughout country.
Because of a lack of clean water in many areas, there is the additional threat of cholera and other diseases, U.N. experts say. Some deaths from cholera already have been reported.
The government has said the widespread hunger “makes people vulnerable to exploitation, human rights abuses and to criminal and terrorist networks.”
The U.N. humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is $864 million to provide assistance to 3.9 million people. But the U.N. World Food Program recently requested an additional $26 million plan to respond to the drought.