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Ethiopia Needs $245 Million by March to Stop More Severe Hunger

  • Poor rains have left over 20 million people in need of aid
  • Crisis response received almost half of $1.4 billion appeal
Local residents await the arrival of the UN secretary-general in Ogolcho in Ethiopia's drought affected Oromia region to tour various UN drought relief projects on Jan. 31, 2016.

Local residents await the arrival of the UN secretary-general in Ogolcho in Ethiopia's drought affected Oromia region to tour various UN drought relief projects on Jan. 31, 2016.

Photographer: Colin Cosier/AFP via Getty Images
By
William Davison

Ethiopia needs $245 million of food aid in the next three weeks to prevent a “potentially catastrophic escalation” in chronic malnutrition cases from the end of April after a lack of rain left millions of people in danger of starvation, Save the Children said.

More than 400,000 children will probably need supplementary feeding because of “severe acute malnutrition” later this year after the country’s worst drought in half a century ruined harvests and killed livestock, the non-governmental organization said Wednesday in a statement. Another 1.7 million women and children may become severely malnourished, which can lead to stunting in minors, if there’s a break in food aid delivery, it said.