DATE=4/12/2000
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
TITLE=ETHIOPIA FAMINE
NUMBER=5-46114
BYLINE=SCOTT STEARNS
DATELINE=GODE, ETHIOPIA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: United Nations officials on Wednesday began a
trip to the Horn of Africa region where 16-million
people are facing starvation because of a prolonged
drought. In Ethiopia, the U-N officials are visiting
one of the worst hit areas near the border with
Somalia. V-O-A Correspondent Scott Stearns has been
to Gode, one of the town's in the drought area.
TEXT:
/// SOUNDS FROM FEEDING CENTER - FADE
UNDER ///
Hundreds of women and children crowd into a feeding
center in the town of Gode. It has become a magnet
for the starving people across Ethiopia's Ogaden
region, people looking for food after years without
rain.
Madar Heeban Munsal holds a metal cup of high-protein
porridge, tipping it into the mouth of her three-year-
old son Mohamed. Ms. Munsal says the boy is all she
has left in the world.
/// MUNSAL ACT - IN SOMALI - FADE UNDER
///
She says her two other children died along the way.
They left home after the cattle died and they decided
to go to a bigger town in search of food. Ms. Munsal
says they could not find transport. So they started
walking -- four days across cracking-hard earth under
the blistering sun of the Ogaden. Only she and
Mohamed survived.
When people do make it to Gode, health workers say
many of them are in shock because of dehydration.
That is particularly true among children under the age
of five who account for more than one-million of the
estimated eight-million Ethiopians at immediate risk.
Bob McCarthy is an emergency officer for the United
Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF.
/// MC CARTHY ACT ///
In the present situation, drought has
underscored the continuing vulnerability of
women and children.
/// END ACT ///
Mr. McCarthy says smaller supplies of less safe water
means more disease among Ethiopian children -- more
malaria and diarrhea, intestinal parasites,
tuberculosis, and pneumonia.
/// MC CARTHY ACT ///
The ability of children to cope with the
consequences of lack of food, lack of access to
medicines and the like, place them at much
higher risk. We are concerned about the
outbreak of measles and spread of other
infectious diseases.
/// END ACT ///
/// SOUNDS OF HEALTH CLINIC - FADE UNDER
///
Disease spreads more quickly when lots of people are
living together without enough water. That is why
relief officials want to get food to areas outside
Gode so more people will stay where they are instead
of crowding into the town.
Habiba Abdi Ibrahim says there is nothing to go back
to. Her family tried to weather the drought on their
farm west of Gode near the village of Imi. But
without water, she says there was no way they could
make it.
/// IBRAHIM ACT - IN SOMALI - FADE UNDER
///
Ms. Ibrahim says they kept waiting for the rains,
hoping season after season that they might have
pasture for their livestock. When drought finally
killed her father and two of her children, she came to
Gode with two-year old son. Now, she says she does
not know what to do.
/// IBRAHIM ACT - IN SOMALI - FADE UNDER
///
Ms. Ibrahim says she always depends on God. But what
about the future? She says Ethiopians cannot keep
expecting the international community to feed them.
Today's crisis will be solved only by the
international community, which provides rations and
therapeutic feeding at these centers run by the Ogaden
Welfare Society. The group's director is Mohammed
Abdi.
/// ABDI ACT ///
The Ethiopian population is 60-million, and the
government cannot really do much if the
international aid is not coming as required or
as the government requests. I do not believe
that the government alone can do much.
/// END ACT ///
Foreign donors have already promised about one-half
the food Ethiopia needs, and aid officials are
optimistic the rest will come. Mr. Abdi says the
problem now is getting the food to the Ogaden, a
remote region with poor roads where the army is
fighting separatist rebels.
/// ABDI ACT //
Sometimes, the food donated does not come on
time because of logistic problems and many
others. The local people cannot transport food
to here because of their capacity and the poor
condition of their trucks. And in other parts
of the country, the transport companies do not
want to put their trucks in risk in this region
because it is a widely known insecure area.
/// END ACT ///
Organizing relief has been complicated by Ethiopia's
war with Eritrea, as Ethiopia no longer has access
to the traditional ports of Masawa and Asab. Most of
the food for the Ogaden will come through Djibouti,
while Ethiopia's northern Tigray region may go through
Port Sudan. (Signed)
NEB/SKS/JWH/JP
12-Apr-2000 11:11 AM EDT (12-Apr-2000 1511 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
.
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