12M face starvation

Press, 9 June 1980, Page 8

12M face starvation

NZPA-Reuter Geneva Drought and civil disruption across a wide swath of Africa, from Chad to Somalia, have brought 12 million people; more than half of them children, close to starvation. The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) office for Europe has made this estimate in a statement which gave these details.— Chad: • An estimated 100,000 people fled fighting in. Chad in March and sought refuge in Cameroon around the border town of Kousseri. Since then .the situation of the refugees has deteriorated and many, children have died from a measles epidemic. Djibouti: The failure of seasonal-rains for two years has dried up. „ wells and caused ' the death of most livestock. About 80,000.

people in the small former French territory are affected, nearly 5000 being children. The number of refugees from Ethiopia and Somalia entering the country “in the vain hope” of finding food and water is estimated at 25,000.

Ethiopia: The situation is again approaching the severity of the famine of six years ago which cost the lives of about 200,000 Ethiopians. Rains failed in 1979 and again this year in both the highlands and pastoral lowlands. More than five million people in nine provinces with a combined population of 20 million are affected. Three million of these are in the Eritrea, Tigre, and Wallo provinces, where about half of the population suffers from malnutrition. The loss of livestock is alarming in the Ogaden

region. The Ethiopian Relief and Rehabilitation Commission says that about 6000 animals remain of more than a million goats, sheep, camels and donkeys two years ago. Somalia: In the aftermath of war is the Ogaden with Ethiopia, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have crossed into Somalia in the last two years. The situation has been aggravated by drought to the point that one in four people in Somalia today is a refugee, either from outside the country or displaced from within the country by the death of livestock and crop failures. More than 700,000 people are being given minimal care in 24 camps and another 800,000 live outside the camps in conditions of great distress. Uganda: At least four mil-

lion people are affected by the drought in the north. The same lack of rain has hit the neighbouring districts of Sudan and Kenya. A detailed survey in 14 districts identified 476,000 malnourished people. Bands of former soldiers of the Amin regime have become cattle thieves, making off with the livestock the population relies on for its principal milkbased diet. About 90 per cent of the 5000 water-bore hole pumps in the country are broken down. People are taking water from polluted sources and cholera has broken out. Although much relief aid enters the country by air and the Kenya road link, the “painfully slow” recovery of Uganda’s administrative and service structures means that much [of the supplies are not being distributed.