Ethiopia: Drought drives deadly child hunger

Conflict and drought have left millions of people in Ethiopia without access to food, water and healthcare. Health centres in the north of the country have been devastated by three years of violence. Meanwhile, the worst drought in forty years has hit agriculture and livestock in eastern and southern Ethiopia. 

 Millions of people around the country need urgent food aid, but fuel shortages have forced support organisations to reduce or suspend deliveries. This week, our reporter Halima Athumani is at Dubti Hospital in the northern Afar region, where admissions of severely malnourished children are rising by 30 per cent a month and the hospitals are seeing a mortality rate of up to 12 per cent.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.