Drought relief must continue, Meles says

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has stressed the importance of sustained emergency relief efforts - especially those targeting children - in his country, which has been ravaged by the regional drought in eastern Africa. "We still need to provide emergency assistance to keep everyone alive, particularly children, who might succumb to problems of malnutrition. There is still room for improvement, but we believe we have averted a major crisis in this regard," Meles told a news conference on Thursday in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. According to the United Nations, at least 1.7 million Ethiopians in the eastern Somali Region and in the southern Borena Zone are struggling to survive with limited access to water and food. About one in five children in southeastern Ethiopia is malnourished, and two out of every 10,000 die each day. The need for therapeutic feeding and water access is urgent. The arrival of the seasonal rains in April has actually exacerbated the humanitarian situation in the short term by increasing the risk of disease; further threatening weakened livestock; and making access to needy people difficult, if not impossible. An emergency vaccination campaign against measles - one of the main killers of children weakened by drought - began at the end of March. At least 34 people have died of measles in eastern Ethiopia in recent months. The prime minister said the seasonal rains had not improved the livelihoods of pastoral communities, which had already lost large numbers of livestock to the prolonged drought. Many more of the weakened animals have died, unable to withstand the sudden drop in temperature caused by the rains. "In the short run, they [the rains] have increased the risk of death of livestock," Meles said. In January, the Ethiopian government, the UN and other aid agencies appealed for US $166 million in emergency food and non-food assistance for 2.6 million people in Ethiopia. In the Horn of Africa region, an estimated 11 million people are facing severe food shortages as a result of several consecutive failed rainy seasons. Humanitarian agencies, including the UN, have launched a $426 million humanitarian regional appeal. The UN special humanitarian envoy for the Horn of Africa, Kjell Magne Bondevik, was expected to arrive in Ethiopia on Friday, after visiting neighbouring Eritrea and Djibouti in an attempt to mobilise assistance for people who had lost their livelihoods to the drought.