A new report released on Monday by the United Nations has estimated that at least 43,000 people died in Somalia’s longest drought on record in 2022, with half of the victims being children under five years old.
The report which is the first official death toll announced in the drought that ravaged large parts of the Horn of Africa, added that more than 18,000 people, and as many as 34,000, are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.
The report which was put together by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, feared that the current crisis is far from over with neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya both facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season while rising global food prices and the war in Ukraine complicate the hunger crisis.
“Famine is the extreme lack of food and a significant death rate from outright starvation or malnutrition combined with diseases like cholera,” part of the report said.
“A formal famine declaration data shows more than a fifth of households have extreme food gaps, more than 30% of children are acutely malnourished and over two people out of 10,000 are dying every day.”
Responding to the report, the U.N. resident coordinator in Somalia, Adam Abdelmoula, told journalists on Monday that the risk of famine still remains imminent going into the year.
“The death rate was increasing as the year came to a close. The hardest-hit populations are in Bay and Bakool in southwest Somalia and displaced people who have fled to the capital, Mogadishu.”
“Millions of livestock have died in the current crisis compounded by climate change and insecurity as Somalia battles thousands of fighters with al-Qaida’s East Africa affiliate, al-Shabab,” he added.