AU holds famine summit as child deaths rise

The African Union is holding a summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to raise funds for the famine gripping the Horn of Africa.

The AU has already pledged 500 million US dollars but the United Nations says that a further 2 billion is needed to ensure emergency supplies to an estimated 12 million of starving and malnourished people. Tens of thousands are believed to have died since the crisis began.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), reports that in southern Somalia, the numbers of malnourished children and mothers have been rising rapidly. The Somali Red Crescent Society has just launched four new outpatient therapeutic feeding programmes in clinics in the conflict- and drought-affected regions of Gedo and Bakool.

"Around 20 per cent of Somalis are suffering from acute malnutrition, which is very worrying," said Dr Ahmed Mohamed Hassan, president of the Somali Red Crescent Society. "It is vital that services be expanded throughout the country in order to save as many children under five and lactating women as possible from malnutrition."

Yves Van Loo, of ICRC Somalia told Vatican Radio that with the opening of the four new programmes, Somali Red Crescent feeding centres now cover the whole country, including all areas most affected by malnutrition: “In Afgoye, in the Banadir region, six additional outpatient therapeutic programmes will soon open to enhance services already being provided there. In remote areas, 13 mobile health and nutrition teams are treating patients who cannot reach a clinic. A new feeding programme supplementing the regular therapeutic feeding will benefit some 49,000 malnourished children and 24,000 breast-feeding and pregnant women”. Listen to Emer McCarthy’s full interview with Yves Van Loo: