Starvation deaths reported in Wajir district

Ten children have died from hunger as the situation of vulnerable populations worsened in Wajir District, northeastern Kenya, according to a government official quoted by the ‘Daily Nation’ newspaper. Abdirahman Abbas, coordinator of the Arid Land Resource Management Programme, said the children had died in the last two weeks at a therapeutic feeding centre run by a local NGO. More than 24,000 severely malnourished children needed supplementary feeding, and almost 300,000 people in the district needed food aid, Abbas told a team from the National Famine Disaster Committee. The effects of drought and malnutrition had been aggravated in the district by an outbreak of kala-azar, he added. Kala-azar is a disease, spread by the sandfly, which causes chronic fever, anaemia and diarrhoea. More than nine out of every 10 people infected die without treatment, either from uncontrolled bleeding or secondary opportunistic infections. The leader of the National Famine Disaster Committee mission, Uhuru Kenyatta, said he was shocked by the famine situation in Wajir and appealed to international humanitarian organisations to urgently intervene, the ‘Nation’ reported. WFP spokeswoman Selma Kalousek told IRIN on Friday that it could not discount the reported deaths from hunger because it was still looking into the issue, but that it had no evidence as yet of confirmed deaths as a result of starvation.