UNICEF: 1.3M Kids In Nigeria And Ethiopia Face Hunger Crisis
One Million Malnourished Children in Nigeria and Ethiopia Face Aid Shortages, UNICEF Warns
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that it will exhaust its supply of lifesaving food for children suffering from acute malnutrition in Ethiopia and Nigeria within the next two months due to funding shortfalls, worsened by cuts to foreign aid under the Trump administration.
According to UNICEF, approximately 1.3 million children under the age of five suffering from severe acute malnutrition in these two countries are at risk of losing access to critical support this year.
“Without new funding, we will run out of our supply chain of Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food by May, and that means that 70,000 children in Ethiopia that depend on this type of treatment cannot be served,” said Kitty Van der Heijden, UNICEF’s deputy executive director, during a video press briefing from Abuja on Friday. “Interruption to continuous treatment is life-threatening.”
In Nigeria, the situation is even more urgent, with UNICEF warning that supplies to feed 80,000 malnourished children could run out as soon as the end of this month. Van der Heijden described visiting a hospital in Maiduguri, where she saw a child so malnourished that her skin was peeling off.
UNICEF’s funding crisis has been exacerbated by a global decline in international donor contributions to UN agencies in recent years. The situation worsened when the United States, which has been UNICEF’s largest donor, imposed a 90-day pause on all US foreign aid on the first day of President Donald Trump’s return to office in January.
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That decision, along with subsequent orders halting many programmes of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) worldwide, has severely disrupted the delivery of lifesaving food and medical aid, throwing global humanitarian relief efforts into disarray.
“This funding crisis will become a child survival crisis,” Van der Heijden warned, emphasizing that the sudden nature of the cuts has left UNICEF with little time to mitigate the impact.
In Ethiopia, funding shortages have also affected health programmes providing nutrition and malaria care for pregnant women and children. UNICEF reported that 23 mobile health clinics in the Afar region have been shut down due to funding constraints, leaving only seven still in operation.
Content Credit| Agbetan Bisola
Image Credit | https://guardian.ng/
Source | sightmagazine.com.au
