“Alarming increase” in refugee malnutrition

The rate of severe malnutrition among Somali child refugees in northeastern Kenya has risen by 172 percent in the last six months, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Tuesday.

According to the international medical relief organisation, general food distribution in the Dadaab refugee camp had fallen by 35 percent, leading to an “alarming increase” in the number of children enrolled in MSF nutritional programmes. “Just because they are an old caseload of refugees does not mean that it is acceptable for food rations to go down, and for the number of severely malnourished children to go up,” said Manu Moncada, head of MSF mission in Kenya.

Most of the 127,000 refugees in the Dadaab camp were from southern Somalia, and had been living in the camps of northeastern Kenya for 10 years, MSF said. The refugees totally depend on humanitarian assistance, and do not have access to alternative sources of food, as the arid environment does not support agriculture. It is the Kenyan government’s policy to forbid refugees from travelling outside the camps.

The Nairobi-based World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman, Brenda Barton, told IRIN that WFP had been making repeated appeals to donors, but had not received sufficient funds to maintain the level of food rations in the camp. “We have received only sporadic funding for the refugee camps in Kenya,” she said. Barton added that the problem was not confined to the camps at Dadaab: the mostly Sudanese refugee population in the camps at Kakuma were facing similar problems. “It is a deep disease,” she said.