Ethiopia Drought Children's Appeal

Increasing food prices and the failure of crops are taking their toll on the children of Ethiopia. Right now, 126,000 children are in urgent need of therapeutic feeding and up to 6 million children under-five are at risk of malnutrition. This is almost half of the entire population of children this age.

The situation is most critical in the drought-affected eastern regions of Oromiya, Somalia and Southern Nations Nationalities and People’s Region.

The drought, loss of livestock, limited food supplies and increased prices of food, fuel and fertilizer are contributing to the crisis, which is predicted to be worse than that of 2003.  

Since 2004, UNICEF and the World Food Programme have worked with the Government of Ethiopia to provide supplementary feeding as well as nutritional screening of children under-five, Vitamin A supplementation, de-worming and measles vaccinations. But these activities are currently under threat due to lack of funds. Only 5 per cent of the £10 million for emergency feeding programmes has been funded this year and an additional £15 million is needed to support related health, nutrition and water and sanitation programmes.

We are appealing for £25 million to dramatically scale-up our responses to prevent children’s deaths from severe malnutrition.