Kenya is in desperate need of food and clean water; cannot get much more basic than that?
Official: U.N. food agency to run out of food
EL WAK, Kenya (AP) — The U.N. food agency will soon run out of food necessary to feed some 3.5 million Kenyans facing shortages caused by prolonged drought because it has received just over a tenth of required funding, a spokesman said Saturday.
Three Masaai women collect food at a feeding centre in Kijiado, southern Kenya.
Anthony Mitchell, AP
The World Food Program has enough cereals to last until April but will run out of other staples by month's end, program spokesman Peter Smerdon said.
The agency has a shortfall in funding of $197 million in its food aid program for Kenya, Smerdon said.
"If we don't get any more food aid it will be a catastrophe," Smerdon said. "We are already on the edge because food is running out and we are supposed to be feeding people until February next year."
World Food Program Executive Director James Morris is expected later in El Wak, 420 miles northeast of the capital, Nairobi. El Wak is seen as illustrative of the effects of prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa, where a total of 11.5 million people need food aid.
El Wak resident Mohamed Ibrahim, 55, said that during the current drought he has seen his camels reduced to 40, from 200.
"We don't just need food, we need other kinds of help as well," Ibrahim said. "People say we should change the way we live but there are no towns, no businesses, no agriculture that we can do. And so we use our animals as banks."
Ibrahim Younis, emergency coordinator of a feeding center in El Wak run by a Belgium aid agency, said more children are coming to the group for help.
"The key problem is water because these children are malnourished and a lack of hygiene means they get diarrhea, which pushes them over the edge," he said.
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