More needs to be done, says UN

Thousands of deaths have been averted in drought-stricken Ethiopia because of an excellent response by the international community, Carolyn McAskie, the UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, said on Friday. At the end of a three-day visit to Ethiopia, McAskie praised donors for helping meet the 1.5 million mt of food needed to stave off famine. "Overall the response has been such that we have saved millions of lives, thousands of lives across the country. This is not 1984," McAskie said, referring to a famine nearly 20 years ago which claimed one million lives in Ethiopia. However, McAskie warned that more needed to be done, and she called for the gap between emergency and long-term development to be bridged to prevent future emergencies. "The needs in Ethiopia cannot be addressed only by an immediate response to this crisis, because the minute you feed up the children and send them home, given the long-term state of deprivation in the communities, these children will be at risk again in another six months," McAskie told a news conference in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, is reeling from a severe food crisis that has affected 12.6 million people –one-fifth of the population. In particular, southern Ethiopia – which McAskie toured - has been badly affected by drought, erratic rains and a large drop in coffee prices. A huge population density of some 600 people per sq km also places an enormous strain on the land. Although no official figures exist on how many people have died in the last year since the start of the drought, aid agencies estimate at least 30,000 have perished. On Thursday, McAskie visited therapeutic and supplementary feeding centres which have been set up in the hard-hit Southern Nations', Nationalities' and Peoples' Regional State. During her visit, McAskie also met Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and discussed with him the need for better basic education and improved health facilities in the country.