Water diseases causing "misdiagnosis" in food crisis areas

Malaria and water borne diseases are compounding the famine in Ethiopia and sparking misdiagnosis of food crisis areas, the UN has warned.

Poor health and water facilities are also “undermining” the food aid response aimed at combating the unprecedented crisis that has hit the country.

And according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), it is mainly children who are falling victim to the “vicious cycle” of malnutrition and disease.

Widespread malnutrition is disguising and making diseases like malaria hard to spot with the inevitable consequences for the already weakened children, the UN said.

The warning follows a study in the hard-hit Southern Nations and Nationalities People's Region in southern Ethiopia.

The multi-ethnic area has baffled humanitarian aid agencies as it is traditionally food abundant. But it has received massive food interventions since the crisis emerged.

Aid agencies say that despite the widespread intervention, thousands of children have needed therapeutic feeding at emergency centres. The number of deaths is unknown.

OCHA warned that the feeding centres cannot cope with children suffering from malaria or water related illnesses.

It also states that a lack of response in helping tackle the poor health and water facilities has exacerbated the problem.

“Areas - where patients are suffering from anaemia, susceptible to water borne diseases and weak from malaria - are being wrongly reported as nutritionally deficient hotspots," OCHA said.

“What is happening is that a good emergency response in the area of food aid is being undermined by lack of adequate emergency support in the non-food sector, particularly in the health and water and sanitation sector."

“In this context, despite the availability of emergency and supplementary food, nutritional levels that should be rising will be negatively affected by debilitating health and water-related issues that manifest themselves in the affected population as malnutrition,” OCHA warned.