{Political violence, malnutrition and the looming threats of malaria and cholera have pushed Burundi to the brink of a \u201cmajor crisis\u201d, the UN children\u2019s agency, Unicef, has warned.}<\/p>\n
Burundi \u2013 one of the world\u2019s poorest and hungriest countries \u2013 has been in turmoil since last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his ultimately successful bid for a third term in office, prompting protests and a failed military coup.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of people have been killed and almost 245,000 Burundians have fled to neighbouring countries over the past 10 months.<\/p>\n
Bo Viktor Nylund, Unicef\u2019s representative in Burundi, said the violence had exacerbated the country\u2019s already dire food situation, damaged its institutions and led to the withdrawal of some of the donor funding on which it is heavily reliant.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore the crisis, the global hunger index had already rated Burundi as the hungriest country in the world,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat we [have seen] in the health arena \u2013 which is 58% reliant on external donors \u2013 is that there are cracks in the system, beginning with essential drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nylund said Unicef had been forced to step in towards the end of last year to provide basic drugs for pregnant women and children. The education system, he added, was also under serious strain.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing similar developments both in terms of increased reports of kids not having had anything to eat when they come to school so not performing \u2013 and so teachers not wanting them in school because they\u2019re not able to concentrate \u2013 and also in terms of school materials and availability of resources for the government to actually run teacher training and so forth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nylund added that the surge in violence last December \u2013 which claimed the lives of at least 130 people over two days \u2013 had been accompanied by an increase in cases of sexual and gender-based violence in the capital, Bujumbura.<\/p>\n
In those neighbourhoods most affected by the fighting, said Nylund, Unicef had also reported a doubling of the number of children being brought to clinics suffering from severe acute malnutrition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re not huge numbers but \u2026 in those affected neighbourhoods, people are often not able to leave and come back and go about their daily business,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nylund said that although some of Burundi\u2019s big bilateral donors were starting to look at new ways to channel their aid money, the country was still facing a shortfall of about $400m (\u00a3280m) this year. Without that funding in place, he said, Burundi would struggle to deal with the increase in malaria cases caused by El Ni\u00f1o and the cholera outbreak threatening to spill over the border from Tanzania.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have a crystal ball, but we\u2019re definitely seeing scary things on the health horizon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven without any more violence, there will be a major crisis, so the time to invest is now \u2013 not when it\u2019s too late \u2026 There\u2019s no way that the people of Burundi can survive with all of this support being pulled out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The UN high commissioner for human rights warned last month that \u201ca complete breakdown of law and order\u201d was \u201cjust around the corner\u201d in Burundi, where his office is examining allegations of gang-rapes, enforced disappearances and the digging of mass graves linked to December\u2019s violence.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the government banned motorcycles from the streets of central Bujumbura following a series of attacks in which grenades were thrown by people on motorbikes. There were five such attacks across the city on Monday, leaving one child dead and scores injured.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9decins Sans Fronti\u00e8res said it treated more than 60 people on Monday. Two similar attacks five days earlier wounded dozens of people.<\/p>\n
Source:The Guardian:[Burundi close to ‘major crisis’ as hunger and disease take hold, warns Unicef->http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2016\/feb\/18\/burundi-major-crisis-unicef-violence-malnutrition-malaria-cholera]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Political violence, malnutrition and the looming threats of malaria and cholera have pushed Burundi to the brink of a \u201cmajor crisis\u201d, the UN children\u2019s agency, Unicef, has warned.} Burundi \u2013 one of the world\u2019s poorest and hungriest countries \u2013 has been in turmoil since last April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his ultimately successful bid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2000072296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[234],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-the-guardian"],"bylines":[{"id":234,"name":"The Guardian","slug":"the-guardian","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":78}],"contributors":[{"id":234,"name":"The Guardian","slug":"the-guardian","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":78}],"featured_image":{"id":2000072296,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23338.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23338.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23338.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23338.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23338.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton23338.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000072296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23338"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23338"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}