Support East Africa Drought and Hunger Relief
Expert answers to your questions about the East Africa Food Crisis. Are children starving? What is a famine? How come there is no food?
When a tragedy of this proportion strikes, the first question from our faithful supporters is “how can I help” but there are many other questions that need to be answered – not the least of which is “why are innocent children suffering”? Here is an FAQ from our experts about this crisis.
How many people are at risk?
The humanitarian catastrophe gripping East Africa has put an estimated 13 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya in need of relief. Millions of children are hungry, thirsty and desperate. They are in danger of becoming critically malnourished and, without help, many in the worst hit areas could die. In Somali, hundreds of people are dying every day in the southern region; at least half of these are children.
What caused the hunger crisis?
A deadly combination of failed rains that have left the region bone-dry, failed harvests, massive loss of livestock herds and skyrocketing food prices has created the worst hunger crisis in decades.
How long will the crisis last?
Emergency conditions continue throughout the affected area. Famine conditions in south and central Somalia declared by the UN and ongoing conflict in that country have also led to children and adults crossing borders into Ethiopia and Kenya since 2011 began.
How many people have fled the crisis and become refugees?
In Ethiopia, the total number of refugees has passed 118,000, and in Kenya three refugee camps in Kenya are home to over 424,000 refugees─ overwhelming the capacity of governments and international aid agencies. Communicable diseases also continue to spread and are taking a fearful toll on children who are already weakened by malnutrition, lack of safe water and poor hygiene.
What is Save the Children Doing to Help East Africa?
Save the Children has been operating in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia over the last 20 years, which enabled us to monitor deteriorating conditions over the past year as the drought and food shortages worsened and intervene to alleviate children’s suffering. Over the next six months, our goal is to reach 2 million very vulnerable children and adults in East Africa. With the situation still worsening and no rain anticipated until October at the earliest, we are urgently seeking support to ramp up our response.
What has Save the Children done so far?
Save the Children is already reaching 500,000 children
- We’re supporting over 250,000 people, helping to buy essential food, water and medicine, as well as distributing livestock and training in farming methods. This creates a ‘safety net’ to stop families from falling into crisis.
- We support over 260 health posts in three regions, enabling hundreds of thousands of children, pregnant women and new mothers to access free healthcare. We have assisted in the renovation of health facilities, and provided medicines and healthworker salaries, helping over 500,000 children and over 200,000 women.
- We work with local authorities to support malnourished children, including 50 health centres and five stabilisation centres for severely malnourished children.
- Trucked life-saving water to areas severely affected by the drought and improving water supply and sanitation facilities in health clinics and schools. In Somalia, 217 water sources and 58 water point outlets have been chlorinated, benefitting more than 480,000 people.
- We’ve trained over 1,000 community volunteers to identify and refer cases of malnutrition. So far these volunteers have reached nearly 80,000 people.
- Supported immunization campaigns and efforts to contain outbreaks of measles.
- Worked with cluster partners to support more than 37,000 displaced children in Somalia to attend primary schools at 155 sites in established camps or neighbouring communities in southern Somalia.
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