---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: IRIN <[email protected]> Date: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 4:34 PM Subject: KENYA: Expand drought response, UN agencies urge To: Jean-Francois Darcq <[email protected]>
KENYA: Expand drought response, UN agencies urge NAIROBI, 27 July 2011 (IRIN) - UN agencies in Kenya have called for the scaling-up of the drought response and mitigation interventions as more people will likely become food insecure amid funding gaps. "The humanitarian crisis that we are facing is huge," said Aeneas Chuma, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator. "It threatens lives, particularly those of the most vulnerable. It also threatens livelihoods and these must be protected as well. "There is considerable operational capacity on the ground; what we need are additional resources to scale up the response." Kenya's humanitarian appeal was 54 percent funded as of 26 July. "At present, 2.4 million people are food-insecure and the number is expected to increase, to be stated firmly after the [March-May] long rains assessment," said Pippa Bradford, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) country director, adding that approximately 3.5 million people could be food-insecure by August. Besides the worst-affected northern and northeastern regions, drought conditions in south-central parts of Kenya are also expected to deteriorate. Bradford said WFP would carry out blanket feeding in the worst-affected districts in the next six months, with children younger than three being given Corn Soya Blend [ http://www.wfp.org/nutrition/special-nutritional-products ] rations to prevent and address nutritional deficiencies. Malnutrition According to a UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) update, of the children needing supplementary feeding, only 21 percent were being reached through WFP and partners. Surveys have shown malnutrition levels above 30 percent - double the emergency threshold - in Mandera and Turkana regions in the north. "In the larger northern Kenya belt, approximately 385,000 children are malnourished, in addition to 90,000 pregnant and lactating women," said Olivia Yambi, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) representative. UNICEF has provided 525MT of ready-to-use food, representing just 34 percent of the needs: "The gap is huge," said Yambi. Yambi said the drought was forcing young people to leave Turkana, for instance, for urban centres such as Eldoret, using hazardous transport that exposed them to the risk of sexual exploitation. "[The drought] is eroding gains in child survival and education. The areas affected already have very poor indicators of development," she noted. "At the best of times children and women remain highly vulnerable; in times of crisis the shocks hit children and women the hardest. "The death of any single person puts a stamp of failure, of accountability across the board." Somali influx In the Dadaab [ http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93280 ] refugee camps in the northeast, children under five being treated for severe acute malnutrition (SAM), which makes them vulnerable to death, have reached more than 100 per month, according to the Inter-Agency Standing Committee on nutrition. "There has been a four- to five-fold increase in the number of deaths among refugees in Dadaab as they are arriving in appalling conditions," said Elike Segbor, the UN Refugee Agency's (UNHCR) country representative. On average, Dadaab has been receiving 1,300 new refugees daily, raising public health and security concerns for the host community. Poor access to water, sanitation and healthcare facilities compounds the threat of measles and polio outbreaks. According to OCHA, an integrated immunization mop-up measles and polio campaign in the north will be conducted from 1 August, with the treatment of 462 confirmed measles cases ongoing. UNICEF is helping to repair boreholes and providing training in cholera-prone districts. Mitigation There are growing calls for investment in long-term resilience [ http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=93337 ] as drought is a recurrent phenomenon in the Horn of Africa region. According to Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), there is a need for forward planning. "Is this as a result of climate change? The answer is simply we do not know. we need to look at adaptation - why is it that we have the rain [in Africa] to support 13 billion people but it is rarely harvested? Why can't we accelerate and scale this?" he asked. "We can live in crisis mode but there must be a smarter way of bringing development." aw/mw[END] This report online: http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93345 © IRIN. All rights reserved. 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