Kenya gets food aid

2005-12-27 19:44

Mandera - Relief operations in Kenya's drought-hit northeast intensified on Tuesday as President Mwai Kibaki inspected food and water distribution in the region, where local officials said at least 20 people had died from hunger and related illness this month.

Amid an outcry about what local media had dubbed the "Christmas famine", Kibaki visited two of the worst-hit areas after making an urgent weekend appeal for $100m to fill a shortfall in funding to help the 2.5 million people expected to need aid by February.

Kibaki pledged to dig new wells throughout the region as government officials and humanitarian groups stepped up the distribution of assistance, aided by the military, which the government ordered to help late last week.

Humanitarian groups

In Wajir and Mandera, among the worst hit regions, Kibaki flagged off about 40 trucks carrying relief food, water and borehole drilling equipment to remote areas, where villagers were facing famine as a result of two years of drought.

He said: "We are going to intensify the distributed of relief to all the affected people. The government asked the military and humanitarian groups to assist in the important exercise.

"The government will also buy livestock from the communities to slaughter, then distribute the meat."

Initially, the president was visibly shaken after he visited severely malnourished children interned in Mandera district hospital.

Malnutrition

As they readied for the presidential visit, local officials said the December death toll from malnutrition and its side effects now stood at least 20, up eight since last week.

A medical official said that at least eight children had died of malnutrition or related diseases since the beginning of the month at Garissa Provincial Hospital, the biggest referral facility in the region, while 12 others had died in outlying areas.

Garissa Hospital chief Khadija Abdalla said: "There is an increase of malnutrition here. Of the 60 patients in hospital now, 21 are children who were brought here because of severe malnutrition."

Other hospital officials said they suspected the toll was higher as they believed they were not yet aware of many deaths among the nomadic pastoral's population that lived in the region.

$55.5m allocated to 10 districts

The official said: "We are certain there are more deaths out there, but it is hard to figure a correct figure because some go unreported."

In Wajir, a dusty district outpost about 500km northeast of Nairobi, a senior official from the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) said entire communities might vanish because of the drought's heavy toll on cattle.

KRCS said it had allocated about $55.5m at least 10 districts each to buy the dying animals for slaughter.

Farid AbdulKadir of the society's disaster relief operations said: "Hundreds of livestock have died in this region and I fear that communities may soon be wiped out since they entirely depend on livestock."

- AFP