Drought fires up new food crisis in East Africa

The worst drought in more than a decade is fuelling a new hunger crisis in East Africa where people are starting to die from malnutrition and thirst. Aid agencies have launched an urgent appeal for money to help the region’s estimated 28 million people facing severe food shortages because of the lack of rain.

North east Kenya, where three years without rain has left the scorched landscape littered with the carcasses of dead livestock is one of the most badly affected parts. People in the region are suffering from malnutrition and hundreds of thousands of cattle, people's key source of food and income, are dying. "I had a herd of 100 goats but just in the last month 40 have died," said Esther Ekouam. "Now the children are very weak because, as the animals are dying, they are not getting enough food. This is the worst drought we have had here since 1969,” she told the BBC.

The aid agency, Oxfam has dubbed the drought, which also affects Ethiopia, Somalia and Uganda, as one of the "worst humanitarian crises seen in east Africa." In Kenya, in Wajir town’s small hospital the beds are full of severely malnourished children, watched over by their fearful, exhausted mothers. Because the women can’t find enough food, they are not producing the milk to feed their babies, said Dr Dennis Onanda, examining a painfully thin two-month-old boy. "Thirty per cent of our patients used to be malnourished, but since June, the figure has risen to 70%," he told Sky news channel.

The drought has sent food prices through the roof. A sack of maize that was once traded for one goat now costs four. The Kenyan government has resorted to trucking water into the remote villages where supplies are still so limited that each family is permitted just 20 litres per day. Ebla Ibrahim gives water to her six-month-old son. She has six children to support on her ration, as well as a small herd of snow white goats. "It doesn't even last us the morning," she said. "We drink a little and then we're all thirsty again. she said standing next to a tiny dome built from twigs where she lives.

Families have been forced to sell what little they have in a desperate bid to survive — even trading household utensils, bicycles, spare clothes and water containers. Many are even pulling their children out of school because they can simply no longer afford to send them. Across the vast region, the story is the same — despair, hunger and death. The drought is predicted to end within weeks, to be replaced by potentially devastating El Nino rains and flooding.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children