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Poor donor response to Ethiopian emergency

"UNICEF plans include a campaign to immunize vulnerable children against measles and to administer vitamin A in the worst affected areas of South Omo, southern Oromiya and Somali regions," said Mr Phillips. "But for that we need urgent donor support. Measles can be a major cause of death in such situations."

UNICEF set out its non-food emergency requirements in a detailed appeal amounting to $7.7 million at the beginning of the year -- over half of which was earmarked for this long-anticipated drought.

A special UNICEF emergency loan of almost half a million dollars for health and nutrition projects has been allocated to the worst affected areas in the Somali, South Omo and Oromiya districts to temporarily bridge the funding shortfall.

"We are talking of over one million children at high risk of acute malnutrition," said Mr. Phillips, "their very weak status makes them extremely vulnerable to disease and death. Time is now of the essence," he stressed.

In Yabello Woreda, in southern Ethiopia, a recent nutrition survey indicated that over 24 per cent of children there are acutely malnourished, weighing below 80 per cent of the standard weight for length measurement.

An estimated 8 million Ethiopians are now threatened. In some of Ethiopia's most traditionally food deficient areas -- North and South Wollo, Tigray, Wag Hamra, Konso -- high population density, combined with extensive soil depletion and decreasing arability, creates chronic nutrition needs, even in good years.

These months are crucial for agro-pastoralists and for humanitarian interventions. It is still possible that rains may come in the next weeks but if, by that stage, the population has been so debilitated by hunger and disease, they will be unable to prepare and weed land for planting, activities that require peak energy.

UNICEF has dispatched to date 86 tons of BP-5 high protein biscuits (donated by the governments of Norway and the US), 30 tons of which have gone to Gode (Somali Region) where the numbers dying of starvation grow daily. Some 95 per cent of cattle are believed to have died in this area and those still standing are no longer producing milk, exposing children and families to nutritional depletion. Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) have been delivered in limited quantities to Gode and technical help given to health and wet-feeding activities for some 2,500 children.

UNICEF reckons that the lack of funding for non-food programmes has had dramatic direct and indirect consequences: increased disease and mortality; the breakdown of basic services and of agro-pastoralist traditional redistribution mechanisms; the breakdown of water pumps from overuse; migration and displacement. Furthermore, school enrolment has necessarily been affected by the situation.

UNICEF plans also include water tankering, the construction of shallow wells and repair of handpumps and the rehabilitation of non-functional water schemes as well as borehole drilling.

"The healthy development of children depends upon the health of their mothers and their ability to put them in the way of good nutrition; of health care and essential drugs; of safe water and of quality education and to protect them from the effects of conflict and natural disasters. This is their right. This is UNICEF business. Help us get on with it," said Mr. Phillips.

With the second highest population in Africa, Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries, ranked 172 out of 174 in the 1999 UNDP Development Index Report. It has one of the world's highest levels of stunting among children due to under-nutrition (64 per cent), low net primary school enrolment (24.9 per cent), poor access to safe drinking water (under 20 per cent) and poor healthcare services.

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