Aid agencies in Shashamina have been inundated with people suffering from malnutrition.
BBC’s Wendy Urquhart reports. Click here to watch.
Government faulted as Ethiopian kids go hungry
By Shashank Bengali, McClatchy Newspapers
SHASHEMENE, Ethiopia — Nine-month-old Alfiya Galeto weighed just 10 lbs. when she arrived at the makeshift clinic here, her eyes dull and her arms as thin as drinking straws. There was no food in their village, her mother said, and for weeks she had been fed nothing but breast milk.
In the week after this clinic was opened by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, nearly 300 children like Alfiya were admitted for severe malnutrition. In the poor farming villages around Shashemene, in drought-ravaged southern Ethiopia, aid workers believe that hundreds and perhaps thousands more children are starving.
A serious drought and the worldwide surge in food prices are fueling one of Ethiopia’s gravest hunger crises in years, with 6 million children younger than five urgently needing food, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF. Relief workers say scores of children already have died.
But international humanitarian groups say the Ethiopian government Woyanne regime has been slow to respond. Prime Minister Dictator Meles Zenawi’s government hasn’t publicly declared an emergency and, the agencies say, has downplayed their estimates of the severity of the situation.
Arid, overpopulated and chronically hungry, Ethiopia receives more food aid than all but a handful of countries worldwide — most of it from the United States, which has provided $300 million in emergency assistance to relief agencies in the past year. U.S. officials defend Ethiopia, a key regional ally, arguing that the government was caught off-guard by the extent of the drought and by how quickly malnutrition rates rose in recent months.
But there were warning signs.
A U.S. humanitarian assessment mission warned in January that humanitarian conditions “could significantly deteriorate” in the impoverished southeastern Somali region. By February — as rainfall remained scant, maize and other staple crops failed and inflation soared — international aid workers reported that malnourished children were showing up at hospitals in southern Ethiopia.
In an address to parliament on March 18, Meles said reports of drought-related deaths were “false.” It wasn’t until late May that a delegation of Ethiopian emergency relief officials toured Shashemene and other parts of the drought-ravaged south. According to humanitarian officials who were briefed on the visit, the Ethiopians were “shocked” by the conditions and pledged to respond.
“It is absolutely critical at this stage that the government of Ethiopia recognizes the depth of its problem, and works to ensure that its children survive this crisis,” said one senior international aid official who, like several interviewed for this story, requested anonymity for fear of angering Ethiopian officials.
The head of another international relief group said: “Is it a lack of information or is it denial? The government needs to recognize this is an emergency, to convene donors and to facilitate the arrival of assistance in the country.”
Ethiopian Woyanne officials weren’t available for comment. But the inability to feed itself is at odds with the image that the government wants to project: that of a country on the rise, with annual economic growth of around 10 percent, fresh off a massive coming-out celebration last year to mark the year 2000 on the Ethiopian calendar.
At the Doctors Without Borders clinic in Shashemene, 150 miles south of Addis Ababa, 277 children were admitted in the first eight days. Hundreds more are in outpatient care in far-flung clinics in the countryside. In Seraro, a remote town about two hours from here, aid workers reported that 55 had died by mid-May.
The children in Shashemene are faring slightly better. Four have died, but the vast majority are slowly putting on weight thanks to a steady diet of fortified milk and Plumpy’nut — a protein-enriched, peanut butter-like paste often used in famine relief.
On a recent afternoon, a group of mothers smiled as 12-month-old Hirwot, who had been admitted a week earlier with persistent diarrhea, weighed in at 3 pounds heavier and was transferred out of the ward reserved for the most serious cases.
Alfiya, the 9-month-old, looked in awful shape when her mother brought her in from their village 50 miles away. Her limp body was swallowed by a pale green sweater and flies buzzed about her head, which was scabbed with sores.
But Veronique DeClerck, a Belgian midwife who inspected the child, pronounced that she would survive.
“Now that she’s here, she gets treatment and she’ll make it,” DeClerck said. “But the problem is when they go home, and there’s still no food.”
Relief agencies say they badly need more Plumpy’nut, vitamin-enriched milk, antibiotics and other treatments.
Some agencies complain that the government continues to impose heavy import duties on emergency supplements like Plumpy’nut, which is taxed at about 50 percent.
Of $50 million needed for life-saving food and medical care, UNICEF says donor countries have chipped in only $6 million.
“We are far from knowing the magnitude of the situation,” said Francois Calas, country coordinator for the Belgian arm of Doctors Without Borders. “We can expect the coming months to be very difficult as well.”
5 thoughts on “Ethiopia is facing its worst humanitarian crisis since 2003”
The head of another international relief group said: “Is it a lack of information or is it denial? ofcourse its a denial!All this tribal gang leaders kids are studing in the states (like the prime miniters),certainly what worry this grups is not malnutrition,but obesity. so international relief group shouid not wait the goverment,and have to react to the disaster very soon.
Is that not a reality to expect, if such a country (with diverse root-cause problems) is being leaded by a blind dog and groups with no moral value?
God has hardened the heart of Meles Seitanawi (Zenawi) and would not listen to the cries of 6 million hungry Ethiopian children for food and medicine.
After the international aid workers have reported that there are thousands of malnourished Ethiopian children in the southeastern Somalia region alone, and in fact, after some 300 hungry Ethiopian children, like Alfia, have showed up, carried by their hungry mothers, at the temporary clinic set up by Doctors Without Borders, still Meles Seitanawi tells to the Ethiopian parliament that there is no hunger in Ethiopia.
He might have told the parliament many lies before, but this is the second time he has told the parliament a pack of lies. First, he has told the parliament that no land is given to Sudan, and now he is telling the same parliament that there is no hunger in Ethiopia. Yes, there is hunger in Ethiopia, especially in Shashemene region, 150 miles from Addis Ababa, where 300 children like Alfia were admitted to the clinic for severe malnutrition, and in the southern part of Ethiopia thousands of Ethiopian children are suffering from starvation and disease. Still Meles Seitanawi ignores the warnings that over millions of Ethiopians are going to perish because of severe hunger in the country.
Recently, some Ethiopian relief workers have visited Shashemene and terrified by what they saw in that region and have admitted that the Woyanne regime has failed to recognize the severity of the famine and to let foreign aids come in. The Woyanne officials are not even willing to be interviewed about the severity of the human crises in Ethiopia. They know they have quite enough information about the crisis but would not like to admit it, which means they don’t care about the deaths of millions of Ethiopian children.
Another insult to the injury is that the Woyanne regime has imposed heavy import duties on foreign aids – on foreign emergency supplements – such as “plumpy’ nut, which is taxed at about 50 percent.” Why the Woyanne regime does such an evil thing while millions of Ethiopian children who need emergency assistance are dying for lack of food and medicine? Instead of totally cancelling the import duties on emergency food and medicine to the Ethiopian children, the Woyanne regime has purposely made every thing difficult for those who would like to send emergency assistance to the Ethiopian children by imposing heavy import duties on those foreign aids instead of accepting such aids duty free; in such horrible conditions, the ones that get hurt the most are the poor Ethiopian children, not, of course, the Seitanawi Meles children and the children of his political gangs. Meles’ children have all they want, and they never know what hunger is, thanks to the Ethiopians’ people’ tax money and to the World Bank’ charity.
So far, how many warnings has God given to Meles Seitanawi that there would be a severe hunger in some parts of Ethiopia? Many times, God through the international relief agencies has warned him that there are thousands of hungry children in Ethiopia; God through the Doctors Wihout Borders has warned him that less than eight days, about 277 famished Ethiopian children have been received to the clinics and hundreds more are in out patient care and some 55 children have died in Seraro, a remote town from Shashemene, and Shashemene itself is not far from Addis Ababa, the capital city, but Meles denies that he knows nothing about the hungry children in Shashemene and Seraro – these two places are very close to the city itself, and he should have know ahead of time that the famine is killing the children and the elderly of Seraro and of many other Southern regions in Ethiopia. I’m confident that Meles has soldiers there, and the soldiers who have been stationed for 17 years in Shashemene know what is going on there, and they might have reported to him but ignored their report as usual. If there were a new political movement in Shashemene, I’m sure, Meles would immediately send a battalion of soldiers to crash down the movement, but when there is a disease that is killing hundreds of the Shashemene children, he wouldn’t send even a single nurse to treat the sick children. What kind of leadership is this?
In reality, Meles Seitanawi has ignored the nine signs or warnings he has been given to let the Ethiopian people go free and elect their leaders democratically, even though it would be too late, he would never ignore God’s final sign or warning – the last 10th sign or warning; that is to destroy Meles, his family, and all his political gangsters, including the illegitimate Patriarch as he purposely destroyed the Ethiopian children by ignoring their daily sufferings from lack of food and medicine.
The ignored 9 signs or warnings or plagues are:
1. The deaths of many innocent Ethiopians in 2005
2. The jailing of several Ethiopians without any justified cause
3. The annexation of Wolkait, and Humera-Setit to Tigray without the will of the Gondar people
4. The land deal with Sudan without the knowledge of the Woyanne parliament
5. The deception of the local election by ignoring the opposing party
6. The recent bombing in Addis Ababa by the Somali insurgents
7. The ignoring of the international relief agencies warning that there would be famine in some parts of Ethiopia
8. The appointment of an illegitimate patriarch
9. The defection of many Woyanne soldiers to Eritrea
These are the 9 plagues that have tormented Meles Seitanawi and his political gangs, but so far he has refused to give up, and of course finally he would give up all his powers when he and his criminal friends are struck by the final deadly 10th plague – death in his house, death in his friends’ house, and death in all his political gangs’ homes!
Here it is, Astta Be Gettu came up with his/her logical and concise explanation of the actual circumstance in today’s Ethiopia.
Tplf gangs will react when the famine reaches Tigrai the great!!
Thank you and you just said.
The children of the devil are destroying everything of Ethiopians. Shamemene is the land where everything is green, and wolayeta is the land where everything grows green. All that is green is now dirt black.
The tplfwoyanae criminals have successfully driven Ethiopians into abjuct and deadly starvation. This is happening in Shashemene and Wolayeta.
You can find the following in the house of the crimefamily: pricy lipsticks,tight genes,millan made shoes,la paris cravates, all sorts of expensive rare metals, and varieties of beverages and alchols. Members of the crimefamily get intoxicated whenever they want and wherever they go.
Such a msssive punishment imposed on the millions of Ethiopians can come to end and the criminals will stand num on their head in front of millions of Ethiopians and receive the right punishment tantamount to the sin and the crime they committed against millions of Ethiopians. Amen.