Dehydrated Somalis drink urine
2006-02-17 19:28
Matthew Lee and Karen Calabria
Nairobi - Dehydration has killed at least seven people in Somalia in the past month as severe water shortages from an East African drought force many to drink their own urine, said an aid group.
In neighbouring Kenya, the drought-related death toll of at least 40 rose as police said four women on a desperate hunt for water were killed in the collapse of a nearly dry well in the parched northwest.
In both countries, along with Ethiopia, a veterinary charity warned that livestock faced complete "decimation", further threatening pastoralist populations without urgent action.
In southern and central Somalia, Oxfam International said communities were living in searing 40-degree centigrade heat with only three glasses a day a person for drinking, washing and cooking.
'People are dying'
Maalim Hussein, a Somali elder who accompanied a recent Oxfam assessment mission to the worst-hit areas, said: "The situation is as bad as I can remember.
"Some people are dying and children are drinking their own urine because there is simply no water available for them to drink."
Oxfam said that the tiny amount of water available, for which many families had to walk up to 70km to get, was one-twentieth of the daily supply recommended by minimum humanitarian standards.
The group's assessment mission said at least seven people and potentially many more had already died from drought-related dehydration since mid-January and that the number would almost certainly rise even with emergency aid.
Situation 'to get worse'
Oxfam's regional programme manager Mohamed Elmi said: "The situation will get worse unless swift action is taken.
"People cannot survive on just three glasses of water a day when the temperature is hitting 40 degrees."
The drought threatens millions across east Africa, 1.7 of whom lived in lawless Somalia, where relief operations were hampered by rampant insecurity, war-shattered infrastructure and a lack of even the most basic services.
Of the Somalis at risk, Oxfam said about 200 000 living along the Kenya-Somalia border in the Gedo and Lower Juba regions were in dire need of urgent water supplies.
Drought-related starvation
About eight million people in four East African countries - Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia - were now in need of food assistance to stave off drought-related starvation.
Livestock-dependent pastoralist communities that lived in the affected areas had been hardest hit as cattle, goats and camels died in unprecedented numbers from hunger and thirst.
Many international appeals for aid had focused on dire shortages of food and animal fodder, but Oxfam said the lack of drinking water in Somalia was critical.
It said: "As well as food, these communities desperately need water. Without water children will die, and the livestock on which pastoralists depend will end up as rotting corpses around dry wells."