'It’s as extreme as anything I’ve ever witnessed': Warnings of Ethiopian famine from charity leader
There are signs that an impending catastrophe caused by famine is unfolding in Ethiopia, according to a charity leader.
Widespread starvation in the war-damaged nation has left the founder of Mary's Meals, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, urging for immediate action to be taken.
The charity has been serving school meals in Ethiopia since 2017.
The organisation's CEO said: "It’s as extreme as anything I’ve ever witnessed in terms of the current suffering and the potential for more deterioration, unless there is a significant intervention”.
Two years of civil war is believed to have claimed the lives of more than 600,000 people.
In addition, millions of people have been displaced and infrastructure and health services destroyed.
Interruptions to aid supplies last year were amplified by severe drought caused by several failed rainy seasons, leaving the region in a humanitarian crisis.
The Tigray region in the north of the country is particularly affected.
According to the president of its Interim Regional Administration, Getachew Reda, more than 91% of the population has been “exposed to the risk of starvation and death”.
Mr Reda added that millions of people are in desperate need of food aid.
This is evident in the region's hospitals, where Mary's Meal's say it has spoken to doctors who claim they are seeing up to three times' more children dying from malnutrition, resulting in a mortality rate around five times higher than normal.
The severity of what is happening in Ethiopia is going largely unreported, according to the charity, because journalists are struggling to gain access to the region.
While schools have been closed during the conflict, providing meals in educational facilities has been paused, but Mary's Meals has been serving meals to thousands of people in refugee camps.
Mr MacFarlane-Barrow said it's hard to exaggerate just how serious the situation is in Tigray.
"People are already dying of hunger and everything we're hearing on the ground points to a well-founded fear of much worse to come if the world doesn’t respond.
"We’ve heard accounts of children who no longer feel the pain from hunger pangs, not because they have eaten, but because they don’t have the energy to feel pain anymore.
“It’s hard not to make comparisons between how the world was so moved to act nearly 40 years ago when Ethiopia was gripped by the infamous famine of the 80s and the situation today that is virtually being ignored. We need to make sure that the terrible outcome Tigray is heading for doesn’t happen, but it will if we don’t act now.”
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