Some 1.4 million children in Somalia are projected to be acutely malnourished this year, an increase of 50 percent over last year, the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, has announced. The figure includes more than 275,000 children who have or will suffer life-threatening severe acute malnutrition.
"The combination of drought, disease and displacement are deadly for children, and we need to do far more, and faster, to save lives," Steven Lauwerier, UNICEF Somalia Representative.
According to a press statement released by UNICEF, Somalia is in the midst of a drought after rains failed in November 2016 for a third year in the row. About 615,000 people looking for food and water have been displaced since then.
The women and children who make the trek, generally on foot, to places where they hope to find assistance, are often robbed or worse, both on the way to, and in, camps. There have been some reports of sexual abuse, including rape, according to the UN agency. Some children have been conscripted into armed groups.
"If assistance doesn't reach families, more people will be forced off their land into displacement camps. Outbreaks of malaria are already imminent, as is an upsurge of cholera," UNICEF said.
Speaking in Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson Marixie Mercado said that a severely malnourished and dehydrated child could die in just a matter of hours if they did not get treatment for diarrhoea and cholera.
Ms. Mercado had just returned from Baidoa, which has more than half of the 28,400 cholera cases documented so far this year. She visited the site of an inoculation campaign which is targeting every displaced child under five years of age with an emergency measles vaccination.
Humanitarians in Somalia are seeking an overall US$825 million to reach the most vulnerable with life-saving assistance until June 2017.
[Image credit: A two year-old child cries for his mother at the Kismayo general hospital in Somalia. Born with a deformity, the child is also suffering from extreme malnourishment. 

Source: WAM