Plan International’s Disaster Response Co-ordinator Dr Unni Krishnan is currently in Ethiopia supporting Plan’s humanitarian response.
Today was a difficult day, a disturbing day.
We are en route to the Arsi zone in central Ethiopia where Plan is setting up relief response to the current food crisis and drought. We stopped in a place called Edo - in one of the worst affected areas of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region in Ethiopia. When you first arrive, the landscape looks green and we seem to be surrounded by fields and plantations full of crops. Your immediate thought is: ‘So what is the problem here? Are people really going hungry?’
But it is very deceptive. On closer inspection, they are false crops – because the rains never came, they failed and are inedible, useless. It's a phenomena known as ‘green drought’ and it is just as treacherous.
We arrive at a small compound of a few buildings. There are military present. At the last round of food distribution (back at the start of July) there were hundreds of people and children here. But now there is no point. The stores which were holding food now have nothing but a few sacks of maize and grain. That is all that is left. It’s not that food is running out – it has run out. The cupboard is empty. What we are now running out of is time.
The thing with drought is that it is a slow-onset emergency. So the good news is - you get an early warning; the bad news is the world doesn’t give a damn until there are pictures of dying children in the media – by when time is already running out.
Meselech and Abraham
We meet a mother of 5 children, Meselech - she is breast-feeding her 4-month-old baby, Abraham. Or rather, trying to. It is desperate to witness and distressing. To breast-feed as a mother you need enough food for 2 people, as the local saying goes - but she doesn’t have remotely enough for 1 person.
She looks tired, exhausted. She struggles to feed Abraham. He cries constantly. And after, he cannot settle - cannot sleep.
The health clinics have said 3 of her children are severely malnourished. So, she is one of the people receiving food materials as part of a targeted supplementary feeding programme - a life-line relief in food crisis situations.
The last time she received food she was given 22.5 kg of maize, 4.5 kg of beans and 0.9 litres of cooking oil. The volume of food materials was calculated based on the number of diagnosed malnourished children. But the supply didn’t last long. No doubt she was trying to feed her entire family and maybe others on this ration.
It is human nature. If you or I were starving, our children starving, you wouldn’t try and save food and give only to a few. For those who are struggling for a meal a day, is there a difference between severely malnourished or malnourished? There isn’t much.
Our response
We have been intervening in other parts like Shebedino for some time with supplementary food distributions and trying to support livestock, helping some 3,066 children and breast feeding women. And also with more long-term solutions like repairing and rehabilitating water points and providing high quality hybrid seeds for planting. We need sustainable long-term solutions to stop this happening time and time again. This will involve better food and nutrition security, better public health systems, disaster risk reduction measures, better agricultural and live stock practices, better trade policies etc. Mostly importantly, it is necessary to place children at the centre of any discussion on ‘drought’ or food crisis. They are the worst hit and often the least heard. But at least in the case of Meselech and Abraham, we at least intervened in time. I think if we hadn’t she would not have had much hope.
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Dr Unni Krishnan sent this update from Ethiopia