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HORN OF AFRICA / AID UPDATE
STORY: HORN OF AFRICA / AID UPDATE
TRT: 2.06
SOURCE: UNICEF
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / AFAR OROMO / NATS
DATELINE: 13-21 JULY 2011, MOGADISHU, SOMALIA / NAIROBI, KENYA / BELINA ARBA, FEDIS DISTRICT, EASTERN HARERGHE ZONE, OROMIYA REGION, ETHIOPIA
13 JULY 2011, MOGADISH, SOMALIA
1. Various shots, supplies being distributed at IDP camp
21 JULY 2011, NAIROBI, KENYA
2. Various shots, supplies arriving
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Shanelle Hall, Director, Supply Division, UNICEF:
“It’s huge drought levels. There hasn’t been such drought in 20 years so the quantities that we need to bring in are really big. In terms of supplemental and therapeutic food its unprecedented quantities for UNICEF.”
4. Various shots, UNICEF emergency supplies
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Shanelle Hall, Director, Supply Division, UNICEF:
“The real challenge is getting it here fast enough. Usually we’d put it on ships and it’d take 20 to 40 days to get it to the Mombasa port and then we’ve got to truck it into the different locations, which takes again another couple of weeks so we’re trying to get this moved via air, which is of course very expensive.”
11 JULY 2011, BELINA ARBA, ETHIOPIA
6. Various shots, health clinic workers with families
7. SOUNDBITE (Afar Oromo) Genete Mohammed, Mother:
“It did not rain on time, and when it did, it rained for two days only.”
8. Various shots, health clinic
Sheer desperation has driven hundreds of thousands of Somalis from their homes in the south of the country, where famine is on the march.
More than fifteen thousand people have come to Mogadishu since the beginning of July.
At a camp for the displaced they wait for UNICEF supplies which will mean the difference between life and death.
UNICEF is providing high energy biscuits, mosquito nets and plastic sheeting to nearly six thousand families at the Hodan displacement camp.
The camp, with its hastily constructed shelters, is just a small part of a growing emergency in the Horn of Africa where an estimated half a million children could die from malnutrition.
As the situation rapidly deteriorates, UNICEF is racing to get supplies to those in need.
At Nairobi airport supplies arrive, bound for southern Somalia, Ethiopia and parts of northern Kenya that are also in the grip of drought, high food prices and crop failure.
SOUNDBITE (English) Shanelle Hall, Director, Supply Division, UNICEF:
“It’s huge drought levels. There hasn’t been such drought in 20 years so the quantities that we need to bring in are really big. In terms of supplemental and therapeutic food its unprecedented quantities for UNICEF.”
Since the beginning of July, UNICEF has delivered 1,300 metric tons of life saving supplies to some of the hardest hit areas in southern Somalia, enough to treat 66,000 malnourished children.
SOUNDBITE (English) Shanelle Hall, Director, Supply Division, UNICEF:
“The real challenge is getting it here fast enough. Usually we’d put it on ships and it’d take 20 to 40 days to get it to the Mombasa port and then we’ve got to truck it into the different locations, which takes again another couple of weeks so we’re trying to get this moved via air, which is of course very expensive.”
At the Belina Arba health post in eastern Ethiopia Genete Mohammed brings her 18-month-old daughter Iman for treatment.
The baby is weighed and measured, and given the ready to use therapeutic food Plumpynut.
Genete says Iman became ill when the family’s crops failed.
SOUNDBITE (Afar Oromo) Genete Mohammed, Mother:
“It did not rain on time, and when it did, it rained for two days only.”
Health workers at this clinic say Genete’s story is much too common. They have never seen malnutrition this bad.
UNICEF is asking for 31.8 million dollars to help the estimated ten million people who are in dire need.
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