Funds sought to aid vulnerable children in drought-hit areas

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has issued an emergency appeal for nearly US $3 million to help thousands of children, pregnant women and nursing mothers to cope with the effects of continuing drought in several districts across Kenya. An estimated 30,000 children and 10,000 pregnant and nursing mothers were in immediate need of nutritional support, the agency said in a statement dated 4 May. Some 200,000 other people required emergency water supplies, UNICEF added. "We must also act quickly to protect the most vulnerable children and women from malaria, to immunise children against measles and polio, and build their immunity to disease with Vitamin A supplements," UNICEF's representative in Kenya, Heimo Laakkonen, said in the appeal. "Food, water and immunisation are urgently needed, but are not enough," he added. "We must also ensure that drought does not force children to drop out of school, or increase the risk of sexual exploitation and abuse." UNICEF will work with its partners, including the Office of the President's Kenya Food Security Group, during the next four months to reach the most vulnerable with emergency health, water, nutrition, education and protection programmes. Inadequate rainfall during the short rains from December to January had caused the continuation of the crisis. Among the districts under stress were Mandera, Wajir, Turkana, Isiolo and Kajiado. In Kajiado, many water sources had failed and those still in operation were under severe stress, according to UNICEF. Across northern Kenya, the rains improved this year, but were not enough to ease the drought. In Mandera District, which borders Somalia and Ethiopia, the effects of drought had been compounded by rising violence from cross-border and inter-clan conflicts that had caused displacement of more than 20,000 people since December. More than a quarter of all children in Mandera were acutely malnourished, UNICEF said. "The assessments carried out across northern Kenya showed the same story," said Laakkonen. "From Wajir in the east to Turkana in the west, at least one in five children are acutely malnourished." Malnourished children were vulnerable to diseases like measles and malaria, yet health services in drought-affected areas were unable to respond adequately. Most were poorly staffed and managed and suffered from acute drug shortages. Immunisation coverage in the North Eastern Province was the worst in the country, according to UNICEF. School dropout rates were rising in the drought-hit districts, many of which already had the lowest school enrolment in the country. Only 10 percent of girls of primary school age were enrolled in primary schools in North Eastern Province, UNICEF said. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on 26 April that, in total, up to two million Kenyans in arid and semi-arid regions would need food assistance until August despite a general improvement in weather conditions. "The debilitating impact of a prolonged dry spell, compounded by chronic poverty, means that in many regions thousands of families are too poor to have enough to eat," Tesema Negash, WFP country director for Kenya, said. In others parts of the country - such as eastern Kenya - the rains had failed once again, worsening food shortages, Tesema added. WFP said it would, between May and August, provide 83,000 mt of food aid to 1.6 million drought-affected people, and an additional 420,000 mt to children under the school-feeding programme. The agency said it was, however, still short of 52,000 mt of food, worth $28 million. The shortfall represents almost 63 percent of the food required.