Source/Credit: HGumanuty First - USA
By HF-USA/AT Report
"A few weeks ago, around nine million were facing starvation in the Horn of Africa," reports The Indepentant newspaper. "Now it is approaching 13 million."
The UN reports some two million children under five are malnourished with at least 30,000 already dead.
Humanity First, an international disaster relief organization is planning to support refugees (largely from Somalia) in camps in north east Kenya.
Currently there are over 370,000 people living in desperate and crammed conditions in the Dadaab camp consisting of 3 settlements, and a second large camp Ifo II is about to open near the Somali border and can accommodate 80,000 people.
Many refugees have been travelling for days with very young children and are arriving in a very poor state. Currently over 1,000 people are crossing into Kenya from Somalia every day.
The refugees lack water and basic food rations and are very weary from travel on foot in extreme heat.
Somalia's Prime Minister Abdiweli Mohamed Ali told the BBC "We are appealing to the international community to take the matter seriously and to act quickly to save as many lives as we can."
The drought is being described as the worst for 60 years affecting at least 8.8 million people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
According to OCHA, 30% of children in the region are suffering acute malnutrition.
The organization also has several hundred water survival boxes now ready to be transported to the region.
The food needs are largely for non-perishable items such as maize and maizeflour, cornflour, beans and cooking fat.
Humanity First's team in Nairobi has been in talks with Save the Children, UNICEF and WFP about the required items and secure logistics to get them to the camps.
In the meantime, several countries have started raising funds including the Middle East, Kenya itself, USA, Canada and Germany.
Humanity First is registered in 33 countries across 6 continents, and has been working on human development projects and responding to disasters since 1992.
These have included the earthquakes in Turkey, Pakistan, Japan and Iran, floods in Africa and Latin America, hurricanes (Katrina and Rita) , tornado's (Kansas) and wild fires (California) in the USA, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and conflicts in Eastern Europe.
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-- Humanity First: East Africa drought at critical stage
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