ESAT News (June 22, 2017)
Aid agencies warn on Thursday that Ethiopia will run out of emergency food aid for the nearly 8 million people who rely on handouts just to survive.
The country director of Save the Children says food pipeline is breaking and donors do not know what happens when food runs out next month.
“We’re looking at the food pipeline actually breaking, so the food is running out in about a month’s time,” John Graham, country director for Save the Children, said, adding, “After that, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” AFP quoted Graham as saying.
The Somali region is particularly the worst affected with no district in the region spared from the scourge.
Livestocks have perished, wells gone dry and close to half a million people who are internally displaced have sought refuge in camps where they hope to get food.
“Skipping meals is common,” AFP quoted Halimo Halim, a grandmother living with her children as saying. “Skipping is the order of the day,” she added.
Reports say even worse situations like the famine in South Sudan has forced aid agencies to reallocate resources.
The Ethiopian regime insists it would be able to feed the people affected if donors fail to help in time. Mitiku Kassa, head of Ethiopia’s National Disaster Risk Management Commission, who said donors have shifted their focus to areas like South Sudan, noted that his government would be forced to use money set aside for development projects to feed victims of the drought, according to the AFP report. Agencies fear that will be too little too late as the process to buy food and get it to the people takes at least four months.