US is biggest giver of Horn of Africa famine aid

AP – 1 hr 44 mins ago

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A U.N. list of countries donating aid money to the Horn of Africa famine shows that the U.S. is by far the biggest donor, having given around $580 million in aid this year.

The U.N. says the world community has given $1.1 billion in aid so far, but that $1.3 billion more is needed to help the more than 12 million people in need. At least 30,000 people have already died.

Britain is the second-biggest donor at $205 million, followed by Japan and Australia. Saudi Arabia is next at $60 million. It is the biggest donor from the Muslim world.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday announced another $17 million in U.S. funding. She said the drought is a reminder of the need to invest in global agriculture

A tortured choice in famine: Which child lives?

By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED - Associated Press

• Faqid Nur Elmi's poses outside her hut in Dagahaley refugee camp north of Dadaab, …
• View Gallery A malnourished child cries at a field hospital of the International Rescue Committee, …
• Article: U.S. gives $17 million more to Horn of Africa famine Reuters - 1 hr 55 mins ago
• Article: UN: Hundreds of thousands face starvation AP - 7 hrs ago
• Article: Somali children struggle in famine-struck Mogadishu AFP - 11 hrs ago

DADAAB, Kenya (AP) — Wardo Mohamud Yusuf walked for two weeks with her 1-year-old daughter on her back and her 4-year-old son at her side to flee Somalia's drought and famine. When the boy collapsed near the end of the journey, she poured some of the little water she had on his head to cool him, but he was unconscious and could not drink.

She asked other families traveling with them for help, but none stopped, fearful for their own survival.

Then the 29-year-old mother had to make a choice that no parent should have to make.

"Finally, I decided to leave him behind to his God on the road," Yusuf said days later in an interview at a teeming refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. "I am sure that he was alive, and that is my heartbreak."
Parents fleeing the devastating famine on foot — sometimes with as many as seven children in tow — are having to make unimaginably cruel choices: Which children have the best chance to survive when food and water run low? Who should be left behind?
"I have never faced such a dilemma in my life," Yusuf told The Associated Press. "Now I'm reliving the pain of abandoning my child. I wake up at night to think about him. I feel terrified whenever I see a son of his age."
Dr. John Kivelenge, a mental health officer for the International Rescue Committee at Dadaab emphasizes the extreme duress Somali mothers and fathers are facing.
"It is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. They can't sit down and wait to die together," he said. "But after a month, they will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, which means they will have flashbacks and nightmares.
"The picture of the children they abandoned behind will come back to them and haunt them," he said. "They will also have poor sleep and social problems."
The United States estimates that more than 29,000 Somali children under age 5 have died in the famine in the last three months. An unknown number too weak to walk farther have been abandoned on the sandy trek to help after food and water supplies ran out.

Faduma Sakow Abdullahi, a 29-year-old widow, attempted the journey to Dadaab with her baby and other children ages 5, 4, 3 and 2. A day before she reached the refugee camp, her 4-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son wouldn't wake up after a brief rest.

Abdullahi said she did not want to "waste" the little water she had in a 5-liter container on dying children when the little ones needed it.

Nor did she want to wait for too long until her other children started dying, so she stood up and walked away a few paces — then returned in the hopes the youngsters were in fact alive.

After several back-and-forth walks, she finally left her two children under a tree, unsure whether they could be resuscitated.

More than 12 million people in East Africa are in need of food aid because of the severe drought. The U.N. says 2.8 million of those are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance, including more than 450,000 in Somalia's famine zones.

Ahmed Jafar Nur, a 50-year-old father of seven, was traveling with his 14-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter to Kenya. But after only two days of walking, they ran out of water. By the third day, they could only sit beneath a big tree — thirsty, hungry and exhausted.
"The two children could not walk on anymore. Then instead of us all dying there, I was forced to leave them to their fate, especially after I thought of the other five children and their mother I left behind at home. I said to myself, 'Save your life for the interest of the five others. These two have their God,'" he said.

"That was the worst thing I experienced in my life. It was a heartbreaking experience to abandon my children who are part of myself," he said. "For almost three months, my mind was not stable. Their images were in front of me."

Miraculously, the two teenagers were saved by nomads, and they have since made their way back to their mother in Somalia. But Nur said he can't afford to bring the rest of his family to Kenya because it cost too much.

"I was a farmer and had no education that can help me now get jobs. We depend on handouts," he said. "My mind is preoccupied with them: Will they all die, including their mother, or will some survive? That is what I always ask myself."

When Faqid Nur Elmi's 3-year-old son died of hunger and thirst on the road from Somalia, his mother could only surround his body with small dried branches to serve as a grave. She couldn't stop to mourn — there were five other children to think about.

"Where will I get the energy to dig up a grave for him?" she asked. "I was just thinking of how I can save the rest of the children. The God who gave me him in the first place took him away. So I didn't worry much about the late son. Others' lives were at risk."

Somalia famine: WFP begins 800-ton airlift of foodPlay Video

• Video: Food aid to Africa increases as famine worsensAP  1:21 | 2987 views
• A pregnant Somali woman sits by a tree trunk at UNHCR's Ifo Extension camp outside …

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The World Food Program is sending 800 metric tons of high energy biscuits to East Africa to help fight the famine in Somalia.

The U.N. food agency said Tuesday that the series of nine airlifts will be enough to feed 1.6 million people for a day. The biscuits are being delivered to Kenya for onward delivery throughout the Horn of Africa.

More than 12 million people are suffering from the effects of drought in East Africa.

The U.S. on Monday announced an additional $105 million in aid for famine relief efforts. The top U.S. aid official said during a trip to a refugee camp in Kenya that models show that hundreds of thousands of Somali children could die in the famine if there is not a strong aid response.

500,000 lassa fever cases each year in west Africa: (WHO)

• The World Health Organisation (WHO) headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland. An estimated …

An estimated 500,000 people in west Africa are infected with lassa fever every year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Wednesday, amid calls for more money to be spent on preventing its spread.

"The disease remains an epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria with evidence of its presence in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Mali," the WHO's representative in Sierra Leone, Dr Wondimagegnehu Anemu told delegates at a conference on infectious diseases.

Anemu said he hoped the four-day meeting "will create an opportunity to examine the potential impact of the epidemic in the region and the world."

Sierra Leone's Health Minister Zainab Bangura said that eradicating the rodent that carries the virus was "almost impossible."

Instead he argued that countries "should embark on adequate measures to prevent the spread of the disease and all available resources should be spent on those access that promote good health as well as personal and environmental hygiene."

The acute viral haemorrhagic fever causes some 5,000 deaths annually in west Africa, according to World Health Organisation figures

African response to Somalia famine too slow: aid group

• A child is examined by a doctor at a food distribution point in Mogadishu on August …

Africa's slow response to the famine in drought-hit Somalia risked sending a message of apathy to the rest of the world, a South African aid group warned Wednesday.

"I think our government's response is very slow. I think the AU (African Union) is very slow," said Imtiaz Sooliman, chairman of aid group Gift of the Givers Foundation which returned Monday from the Somali capital Mogadishu.

"I think we are sending a very wrong message to the world. If Africa doesn't care about Africa, how do you expect other countries and other continents to care about this continent? We need to be more proactive. We spend too much time in meetings and discussions."

The United Nations has officially declared famine in Somalia for the first time this century, including in Mogadishu and four southern Somali regions.

"The first comment the Somalians made is finally Africa has responded to us. That's the comment that they made, wanting to know where is Africa," said Sooliman about the eight-day mission.
The AU's decision to postpone a pledging conference from Monday to August 25 was made while children were dying daily, he told parliament's committee on international relations.

The South African government has raised eight million rand for Somalia and has pledged half to the group, whose recent aid delivery cost 12 million rand ($1.7 million, 1.2 million euros) including transport.

"South Africa needs to make a substantial contribution," said Sooliman, who also cited an absence of international aid groups on the ground in Mogadishu.

"What is four million rand? It gives a very blunt message that we don't care about Africa. We need to make a strong commitment and tell the AU we need you guys to come. Africa is not poor, our thinking may be poor."
Africa could solve the problem itself and this needed to be driven strongly by the South African government and the continent's bloc, with immediate action needed.

"Every day we waste, there are children dying and (if) Africans don't care about Africa, don't expect anybody else in the world to care about us," said Sooliman, whose group has worked in Libya, Haiti and Pakistan.

"We need to set an example. We're spending too much time, year in, year out, discussing what we are going to do and when we are going to do it. Let's do it now. No more discussion. It needs to be done."

August 2, 2011

Drought and Death

A member of the Samaritan’s Purse team responding to the food crisis in the Horn of Africa reports from our base in Kenya

Laurent Trabadello, Regional Manager for Africa and the Americas for our office in Canada, reports about the dire conditions on the ground and how Samaritan’s Purse is helping.

Not a drop of rain in three years! This is the current reality faced by the population of northeast Kenya. One doesn’t have to look far for the visible signs of this drought. The ground is parched, the trees are dry. The color green is conspicuous by its absence.

As we drive from the city of Garissa to the Somali refugee camps in Dadaab, the landscape is one of desolation. Occasionally, we see a caravan of donkeys and camels loaded with yellow plastic water containers.

Food Crisis in the Horn of Africa: Samaritan's Purse is distributing food to hungry families

The women who lead this procession are either walking to or returning from distant water distribution points. They sometimes have to walk 10-12 miles under the scorching sun to reach the nearest borehole.

Water is scarce. Wells are 500 feet deep and sometimes the water is salty. Water trucks will dump the precious liquid in tanks in remote communities, but we hear that the water is pumped straight out of the distant Tana River. What choice do people have?

Another sure sign of drought are the animal carcasses lining up the side of the road. Some have had a long time to rot, but others look like they have just fallen from exhaustion. Goats, cows, and even a giraffe remind us that a shortage of food and water inevitably lead to a slow death.

Dadaab surprises us by its sheer size. The giant refugee settlement is now home to more than 400,000 people, mostly Somali families who have escaped their own country with hopes of a better future in Kenya.

The political instability in Somalia has only exacerbated the effects of the drought, causing the United Nations to call the situation a famine. As a result, 2,000 new refugees cross into Kenya daily, slowly and painfully making their way from the border town of Liboi to the camps in Dadaab, located approximately 60 miles from the entry point.

This last stretch is undoubtedly the most challenging. People have been walking for weeks. They are hungry, thirsty, and exhausted from their exodus. Each story is different but the common thread is tragic. Many have lost children along the way, starved to death, with no other choice but to leave them behind. I don’t think any of us can fully understand the unimaginable sense of helplessness that a mother can feel when facing such tragic circumstances.

When these new arrivals finally make it to Dadaab, they receive a ration of food for 20 days, a tent, and medical attention. It’s not much, but it’s still more than some Kenyan communities in the corridor between Liboi and Dadaab are getting.

Much attention is given to the plight of the refugees, and rightly so, but the host communities of Kenya are not given much consideration. Yet they too face the devastating effects of the drought.

The percentages of children who are malnourished have soared. The nomadic cattle herders have lost their source of income, as animals have died and prices for livestock have plummeted, leaving them with insufficient means to provide adequate food for their families.

This is why Samaritan’s Purse has chosen to focus its efforts on helping the Kenyan communities in this area.

There are immediate needs, such as screening for malnourished infants and providing necessary supplements to nurse them back to health. We have found many health posts fully equipped to be used as feeding centers but with no one to run the programs. So, among other emergency interventions, Samaritan’s Purse will be training community health workers to run these needed programs and will supervise the work in a large area with many remote communities around Dadaab.

This is in addition to the food distributions that have already started, reaching needy families with maize, beans, oil, and sugar.

Working with Kenyan communities will also allow us to invest in their long-term future, helping them cope with recurring droughts. Better access to clean water, improved agricultural practices, and livestock restocking will allow beneficiary communities to face the future with greater confidence.

The needs are great, and the resources to implement these programs are insufficient. With your support we can extend the reach of our programs and add to the number of communities that will receive needed assistance.

As we leave Dadaab, heading back to Garissa, a few drops of rain hit the windshield. We see this as a sign of hope. However, many more drops of rain will be needed to quench the cruel thirst of this dry and weary land.

Will you join your prayers and support to these precious drops of life-giving water in a concerted effort to bring lasting hope to a people that have seen enough hardship?

Somali refugees arrive at the Dadaab Refugee Camp in eastern Kenya, July 18, 2011

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Jehad Nga for TIME
The outskirts of the Dadaab refugee complex are jammed with dome-like huts made of sticks, refuse, plastic sheeting and discarded cartons from aid packets. Toilets are scarce, and water is delivered periodically by truck. More than 60,000 people are occupying these makeshift encampments built atop a harsh arid landscape in the far east of Kenya, just over the Somali border. The ragged domes in the desert look like something from the post-apocalyptic world of Mad Max.

The Dadaab refugee complex is already the largest in the world, with more than 380,000 residents - four times the capacity it was built for, when the three encampments that form the complex were built in the early 1990s. The camps no longer accept new admissions, so tens of thousands of new refugees, most of them women and children, that are fleeing Somalia in the wake of the drought that has gripped the horn of Africa are left to set up makeshift housing in the no-mans land that surrounds the official camps. Simply put, there is no place for them in Dadaab itself. (World's Greatest Ongoing Humanitarian Disaster Reaches a Crisis Point)
The famine-like conditions in Somalia have led to an increase in the number of refugees coming over the Kenyan border from around 5,000 per month in 2010 to an estimated 30,000 in June. The refugees must make a perilous journey from their conflict-ridden country and navigate for days through forbidding terrain, usually on foot. Most of those who arrive are badly malnourished, and aid workers say that many children did not survive the trip, while others died as soon as they arrived.
Hawa, 40, came here from the Buale district in Somalia after a 23 day trek on foot with her seven children. She left, as did all of her neighbors, because there was not enough food. When fighting arrived in her locale, her husband disappeared, and she fled with the children. Her one year old son, Abdu Noor, is recovering in a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders from severe malnourishment. Now, the rest of her family has settled in a makeshift hut in the outskirts of the official camps, living rough and scrambling for basics like food and water.
Coming here, she had hoped for a safe haven, says Hawa. "What I found is that there is little difference between Somalia and a refugee camp." (Kenya's Banking Revolution)
The recent surge of refugees has led to a flurry of new media and diplomatic attention, but in truth the conditions in the camps have been bad for years, with four families forced to settle on a plot built for one. Things really began to get bad in January of this year, but despite warnings from aid groups and relief agencies and government drought monitors, the response from international donors was tepid.
"We raised the alarm quite early, but for me, the response was inadequate", says Dr. Edward Chege, the director of the hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the Dahagely refugee camp. The number of severely malnourished children - meaning they are close to death — at the hospital has swelled from 20 in January to more than 130 now. They expect the number of patients to increase in the coming six months, says Dr. Chege.
Malnutrition rates for small children in the outskirts is around 30%, and about half of those are severe. That is twice as high as the malnutrition rates in the official camps, but even 15% is already at crisis levels. It is usually children under 2 that get the worst of it. That said, aid officials say they are seeing severely malnourished children up to 10 years old, which is extremely unusual and shows the severity of the crisis.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2084078,00.html#ixzz1UacSPvb2