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| One-year-old Nebele Kadir is severely malnurished because her family cannot afford food. Like Nebele, 75,000 children have severe acute malnutrition in Ethiopia. (2008 Amber Meikle/CARE) |
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When one-year-old Nebele Kadir arrived at CARE's stabilization centre in Haramaya, East Hararghe ten days ago, she was almost comatose. Weighing 5.5 pounds – she was smaller than many newborn babies. Along with the other twenty-eight inpatients she is severely malnourished, a victim of the food crisis engulfing millions of Ethiopians as food prices soar out of reach and food stocks dwindle.
Across the country, another 75,000 children have severe acute malnutrition, and the numbers are rising fast. But unlike Nebele, who has put on a pound in the week since she started her programme of 3-hourly feeds, most are still in urgent need of life-saving treatment. Carefully cradling her tiny daughter her mother slowly explains, "She is here because I don't have money. The price of food is rising so much that despite working harder and harder, my income doesn't make any difference. I don't have anything to feed her." The global rise in food prices could not have come at a worse time. It is almost harvest time in Nebele's village, but across the country late and inadequate rains means there is little to harvest. Families dependent on what they grow are long used to surviving a two-month annual "hunger gap," but this year's crop failure means the gap could last five months, until at least November. With no crops to sell, and with the price of many basic foods having more than tripled in a year, millions of families are facing a daily struggle to stay alive. In total, more than 4.6 million people are in need of urgent emergency assistance. | Misra Ahmed weighs her son's powdered nutritional supplement provided by CARE. (2008 Amber Meikle/CARE) |
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A short drive away, at the Balla health clinic, Misra Ahmed weighs out her four-year-old son's ration of a nutritious powdered supplementary food provided by CARE. He has been referred for early treatment for his moderate acute malnutrition, spotted by staff at his local health post – one of many set up country-wide thanks to heavy investment by the government in recent years. CARE is already supplying supplementary food to more than 50,000 malnourished children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, and transferring food to another 200,000 people across Ethiopia to prevent their slide into the same state. "This food will help my son, but it doesn't cover my whole families needs," Misra admits. "I have not eaten since yesterday, and the quality of food I can afford for my other children is close to water." Even the supply of this emergency food is uncertain, quality and quantity squeezed by the sheer numbers of admissions combined with the increasing cost of emergency food. "I am not alone. My neighbors are like me, and we are having to share what we have with each other," Misra continues. "But I have nothing so, without help, things will only get worse and worse."
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