The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, will fly its first humanitarian airlift to Somalia in five years next week, the agency said at a briefing in Geneva on 5 August.
The first of three planned flights is scheduled to land in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on 8 August.
The plane will be taking more than 31MT of shelter material and other aid items from the agency’s stockpile in Dubai to the displaced in Mogadishu. An estimated 100,000 people, fleeing drought and famine, have reached Mogadishu over the past two months alone in search of food, water and shelter.
Meanwhile, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it was getting positive responses to its request for free or heavily discounted air cargo space, with Fedex putting a Paris-to-Nairobi flight at its disposal.
British Airways, Lufthansa, UPS and Virgin had earlier also offered cargo space for critically needed supplies.
"We're looking to others to come forward with more help," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said.
To date, thousands of people have died in south-central Somalia alone of starvation and diseases related to the food crisis. UN officials say no precise figures are available because of the security situation.
Health officials fear the situation could deteriorate. "There is still a high risk of disease outbreaks in drought-affected areas due to poor access to potable water, living conditions in overcrowded camps and susceptible malnourished children,” Fadela Chaib, the spokesperson of the World Health Organization (WHO), said.
Acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) is increasing in Somalia, mostly affecting young children. In Mogadishu, 77 percent of the 3,839 reported cases are children under five. In addition, more than 17,500 cases of measles were reported in the first six months of the year, mainly in drought-affected areas of Ethiopia.
UN agencies say the critical health response to the crisis is severely under-funded. In Somalia, for example, WHO says only 23 percent of its requirement for health assistance has been funded to date.
UNHCR says it too faces a critical shortage of funds.
"Unless new funds are swiftly committed, this shortfall will impact [on] vital humanitarian assistance for tens of thousands of Somali refugees and internally displaced people," the agency said.
The crisis affects 12.4 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. A total of US$2.5 billion is needed for the relief effort, of which only $1.1 billion has been funded to date, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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The first of three planned flights is scheduled to land in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on 8 August.
The plane will be taking more than 31MT of shelter material and other aid items from the agency’s stockpile in Dubai to the displaced in Mogadishu. An estimated 100,000 people, fleeing drought and famine, have reached Mogadishu over the past two months alone in search of food, water and shelter.
Meanwhile, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it was getting positive responses to its request for free or heavily discounted air cargo space, with Fedex putting a Paris-to-Nairobi flight at its disposal.
British Airways, Lufthansa, UPS and Virgin had earlier also offered cargo space for critically needed supplies.
"We're looking to others to come forward with more help," UNICEF spokeswoman Marixie Mercado said.
To date, thousands of people have died in south-central Somalia alone of starvation and diseases related to the food crisis. UN officials say no precise figures are available because of the security situation.
Health officials fear the situation could deteriorate. "There is still a high risk of disease outbreaks in drought-affected areas due to poor access to potable water, living conditions in overcrowded camps and susceptible malnourished children,” Fadela Chaib, the spokesperson of the World Health Organization (WHO), said.
Acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) is increasing in Somalia, mostly affecting young children. In Mogadishu, 77 percent of the 3,839 reported cases are children under five. In addition, more than 17,500 cases of measles were reported in the first six months of the year, mainly in drought-affected areas of Ethiopia.
UN agencies say the critical health response to the crisis is severely under-funded. In Somalia, for example, WHO says only 23 percent of its requirement for health assistance has been funded to date.
UNHCR says it too faces a critical shortage of funds.
"Unless new funds are swiftly committed, this shortfall will impact [on] vital humanitarian assistance for tens of thousands of Somali refugees and internally displaced people," the agency said.
The crisis affects 12.4 million people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia. A total of US$2.5 billion is needed for the relief effort, of which only $1.1 billion has been funded to date, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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