Warnings and appeals have been around for months. But now the persistent drought in the Horn of Africa is threatening the lives of millions of people. Young children in particular are now at risk of starvation.
Nala Hassan waits stoically in the courtyard of the Bardalle Mother and Child Clinic in Baidoa, southwest Somalia. Beneath her cloak, she holds her little son Rachid in her arms, who keeps making pitiful cries. The young Somali woman puts the nine-month-old baby to her breast, but the emaciated woman has no more milk.
A week ago, she arrived in the city of Baidoa from her home village in south-west Somalia, like so many whose supplies have run out after a fourth consecutive unsatisfactory rainy season, whose livestock have starved to death in the Horn of Africa’s drought. “He’s getting weaker and weaker,” she says worriedly while trying to calm the little one down.
“It’s getting more every day”
There are many women like Nala. The courtyard of the clinic is already crowded with women with their babies and small children in the early morning. “The number is increasing every day,” says Mohamednur Abdiraman from the Save the Children charity, which supports the hospital. For the doctors and the hospital staff, the race against time to save the children’s lives began weeks ago.
But gradually the situation becomes dramatic. In this clinic alone, eleven malnourished children lost the fight for their lives in May. A fever or diarrhea can have fatal consequences in their weakened state. In June, the number of children who could no longer be saved rose to 18. How many starved on the way in their home villages, how many dead children there will be – no one dares to estimate.
Baidoa is just one of many places in the Horn of Africa battling the effects of the worst drought in 40 years. According to the World Health Organization, more than 80 million people in Ethiopia, Somalia and northern Kenya do not have enough to eat.
Helpless helpers
Malnutrition is increasing – most dramatically among the youngest and most vulnerable. The fact that no grain could be shipped for emergency aid for months due to the war in Ukraine made the situation even worse. However, the war in Ukraine also ties up donations. Currently, the UN’s Ocha emergency aid program has not secured even 30 percent of the funds needed for Somalia. Rarely have the helpers been so helpless.
Most of the children in the clinic courtyard are very still, too weak even to scream. Rachid too, whose hunger is still unappeased, lies apathetically in his mother’s arms, protesting only kicking and crying when a doctor wraps a tape measure around the little boy’s fragile, thin upper arm.
Even if the tape in the traffic light colors is loose, the color marking is bright red. Rachid is severely malnourished, the most critical form of malnutrition. Measuring and weighing confirm what even a medical layperson can easily determine: the little boy is much too light for his age, weighing 4.1 kilograms. “Six to eight kilograms would be normal,” says the nurse, who enters the little boy’s values into a form.
A doctor refers Rachid to the Sahal Macalin Stabilization Center, where severely malnourished children are nursed back to health. But the child’s condition is so serious that no time can be wasted. Nala is immediately given a packet of nut paste and finger-feeds Rachid the nutrient-rich porridge-like contents. The little one swallows greedily. He’s taken care of for now. But he still has a long way to go.
More and more drought refugees are coming
“Since May we have seen a rapid increase in severely malnourished children,” says Ismail Ah, the clinic’s chief administrator. The clinic with 110 beds has reached its limits. It already has to care for 130 small patients, some of whom are struggling to survive for weeks. Tents were erected to provide additional capacity. Up to 160 children could now be taken in, says Ah. But will that be enough after more and more drought refugees are flocking to Baidoa?
Habiba Ali sits with her child on the hospital bed under a mosquito net. She smiles lovingly at the little one who, like Rachid, appears fragile with her thin arms and legs. “We came here the day before yesterday,” says the young mother. “And she’s doing a little bit better.” As she strokes the child’s head, hope and despair are balanced. “A child starved to death, I don’t want to go through that again.”
The starvation of the two-year-old was the last reason to leave her home village and come to Baidoa, walking for days, past dead cattle, abandoned villages and fields where only stones and thorns can be harvested.
Threat from terrorist militia Al-Shabaab
60-year-old Waris Abdi also worries about the life of her two-year-old grandson Mohamed, who lies apathetically in her arms. His eyes look huge. “I hope you can help him here,” says the thin woman with a worry-lined face. “I’m scared he’s dying.”
An exhausting and dangerous flight lies behind her, because her hometown, 70 kilometers away, is in an area where the radical Islamic terrorist militia Al-Shabaab is in charge.
‘They’re besieging us there. Even if it weren’t for the drought, they would prevent us from cultivating our fields,” says Waris. They walked to Baidoa for three days, initially only at night, always afraid of running into the Islamist fighters who want to set up a so-called theocracy in Somalia.
Waris is one of only a very few of the drought refugees to speak out about al-Shabaab. Most immediately dismiss the idea, fearing the militias, who also have positions just 15 kilometers from Baidoa, are too great. The government mainly controls the cities, but Al-Shabaab rules in the countryside, which in the past has repeatedly denied access to humanitarian aid workers.
“They don’t care how much people suffer,” says a clinic employee. “Anyone who doesn’t want to fight for them is an enemy in their eyes.”