County News

Somalia in need of help and China plans to step in

Published

7 years ago

June 3, 2017

An internally displaced Somali woman holds her malnourished child fitted with a nasogastric tube inside a ward dedicated for diarrhoea patients at the Banadir hospital in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu, March 5, 2017. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

SOMALIA—A new batch of supplies for the World Food Program is set to be dispatched from Shanghai. The donation by the Chinese government will support hundreds of thousands of Somalis who are in dire need of food assistance after a severe drought hit the country.

Somalia is perilously close to famine. A sustained drought has left once fertile cropland cracked and useless … animals are dead … and families are in dire need of help.

During the 2011 famine in Somalia, an estimated 260,000 people died and over half of them were young children. Health workers say the main causes of death among children were diarrhoea and measles.

The children nutrition situation in the country has deteriorated more rapidly than projected. Preliminary results from the Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit – Somalia (FSNAU) assessments in April 2017 indicate critical levels of acute malnutrition among rural pastoral populations of Sool, Sanaag, Bari, Nugaal regions, all in the northern and northeastern part of the country and agro-pastoral populations of Bay region, as well as among the internal displaced people in Baidoa and Mogadishu.

Additionally, since January 2016, about 56,000 former Somali refugees have returned from Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp to Somalia through UNHCR’s voluntary repatriation program and have settled in Gedo, Bay, Lower Jubba, and Banaadir

This donation comes following China’s commitment to food assistance at the Belt and Road Forum held in Beijing last month. The aid will travel along the Maritime Silk Road and arrive in Somalia in approximately 35 days.

The food aid will be delivered to approximately 223,500 people in 18 drought-stricken regions, providing them food for four months.