Provide Lifesaving Relief to Drought Victims

“We eat only once a day,” Nalow, a 30-year-old wife and mother said, with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Our lives depend on whatever our neighbors give us.” 

Nalow and her family fled from Tiyeeglow in Somalia in October 2016 after a militant group took control of the area. They now live in Domey displacement camp in Beledweyne, in south-central Somalia. According to the local authorities, some 18,500 people live in makeshift shelters in the displacement camps around Beledweyne, where malnutrition is widespread and diseases, like acute watery diarrhea, are rampant. 

When Mohamed from our Emergency Response team met Nalow, she explained she had already lost two children. Aged six and four, her children succumbed to acute watery diarrhea. Now she was on the brink of losing a third – her youngest, 15-month-old Ahmed, who was seriously ill, while Nalow and her husband, Abdi, had no money to pay for medical care. 

As illustrated by the journey of Nalow and her family, the humanitarian situation in Somalia continues to worsen with more than 6.7 million people – over half of the population – in need of humanitarian assistance such as food, medical attention and protection. Moreover, communicable diseases, like acute watery diarrhea, have the potential to exacerbate already dangerous malnutrition conditions. As a result of the current drought caused by several seasons of limited rain, more than 6.2 million people face acute food insecurity and some 680,000 people have been displaced. 

For Nalow and her family, receiving humanitarian assistance is not a luxury, but a necessity. Mohamed and our Emergency Response team arranged for Ahmed, Nalow’s son, to receive care at a nearby hospital. While his future, like that of so many Somalis, remains uncertain, Ahmed will receive the care he needs to survive today. 

We thank the GlobalGiving community for your continued support as we address the health and nutrition needs of drought-affected Somalis.

A third year of drought in the region has left nearly 13 million people in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia food insecure, with crops and livestock decimated and food and water prices rising. An estimated 600,000 children under five will be in need of treatment for severe acute malnutrition in the coming year.

Somalia, which has also been ravaged by two decades of conflict, has just declared a state of national emergency. People in northern Somalia are already dying from the drought, and tragically, for many families, it is not the first time they have faced such conditions. Somalia’s 2011 famine killed some 260,000 people, half of whom were children under five, and the current drought has the potential of being the worst in 50 years. The United Nations estimates that more than half the population of Somalia will be in need of humanitarian assistance by June 2017, and more than 270,000 children will be severely malnourished. Thousands of families are on the move in search of food and water, and over the next three months, up to 100,000 Somalis are expected to cross the border into Ethiopia, which is already experiencing its own driest period in decades.

“Half of the population in Somalia—6.2 million people—are in need of assistance,” said Mohamed, International Medical Corps’ Country Director for Somalia. “The drought has wiped out crops and livestock and forced families to sell assets or borrow money to survive. If the response does not scale up, communities in the hardest-hit areas will slide further and further into crisis and people will die—all from causes we could have prevented.”

The government of Kenya has declared the drought a national disaster, with some 2.7 million in need of food aid. Ethiopia and Kenya’s worsening conditions, compounded by the influx of Somali refugees and displacement of people within the countries themselves, are depleting resources and putting a significant strain on existing humanitarian aid. The situation is rapidly deteriorating as food prices are rising, along with livestock deaths and malnutrition rates.

International Medical Corps is now working to meet the rapidly growing and urgent needs of families by scaling up health, nutrition, and water, sanitation and hygiene services throughout the region—expanding programs into drought-affected areas to reach those who are most in need.

In Somalia, International Medical Corps continues to support hospitals, health centers and primary health clinics, helping to ensure they have urgently needed supplies, capacity and technical support to respond to this growing crisis. International Medical Corps’ nutrition care centers in the areas of Abudwak and Balambal saw caseloads increase by 127% between September 2016 and January 2017, and we also offer services in the only stabilization center in Somalia. To meet the urgent need for clean and safe water, in January, our teams also trucked 1.6 million litres of water to drought-affected villages in Somalia, benefitting some 19,000 individuals.

In Ethiopia, we are providing nutrition support to some 105,634 malnourished children and 59,420 malnourished pregnant and lactating women. International Medical Corps also launched emergency seed distribution in some of the worst-affected areas in the East Hararghe Zone to ensure that families have access to food. In the Dollo Ado refugee camps, we are reaching the influx of Somali refugees with nutrition services, and, to meet gaps in response to the critical water shortage, we have rehabilitated 107 water points, supporting some 82,700 individuals in the last year.

In Kenya, to prevent and treat malnutrition International Medical Corps is supporting some 450 health facilities in seven counties, where more than 93,000 children and pregnant and breastfeeding mothers are acutely malnourished. Our work includes strengthening the capacity of the health system to deliver high-quality nutrition services, advocating with the government to increase its commitment to eradicating malnutrition, and educating communities about how malnutrition can be prevented. We are currently training 216 frontline health care workers to manage severe and moderate malnutrition and helping community facilities carry out mass screening campaigns—even in very remote and hard-to-reach areas—to identify cases of malnutrition and connect them to treatment services.

We thank you and the GlobalGiving community for your ongoing support as we provide lifesaving services and care during this critical time of need.