{"id":24477,"date":"2016-04-09T01:42:29","date_gmt":"2016-04-09T01:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/drought-leaves-6-million-ethiopian-children\/"},"modified":"2016-04-09T01:42:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-09T01:42:14","slug":"drought-leaves-6-million-ethiopian-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/drought-leaves-6-million-ethiopian-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought leaves 6 million Ethiopian children hungry"},"content":{"rendered":"

{International charity says millions of kids face critical food shortages and waterborne disease as crisis intensifies.}<\/p>\n

At least six million children in Ethiopia face critical food shortages as a result of the worst drought in 50 years. <\/p>\n

The non-governmental organisation Save the Children warned on Friday the number of Ethiopians without enough food is rising as the drought intensifies in the African country with children particularly vulnerable. <\/p>\n

The drought-affected area is vast with a population of about 30 million affected – with more than one-third in need of emergency food assistance.<\/p>\n

The region has now suffered three failed growing seasons in a row since mid-2014. More than 14,000 pastoralist families have been on the move since July, looking for work or clean water supplies.<\/p>\n

Helle Thorning-Schmidt, chief executive of Save the Children, pressed the international community to step up its support for those suffering.<\/p>\n

“Thousands of children are at high risk of malnutrition and waterborne diseases. Families are on the move, desperate to find food and water,” Helle said in a statement. <\/p>\n

“We have all the right early warning systems in place to prevent potentially enormous human suffering, but what use is early warning if the international community doesn’t come forward?”<\/p>\n

Aid agencies and the government said they must raise more than $1.4bn of aid to handle the crisis, but that only about half of the amount has been collected.<\/p>\n

Habiba, a mother of seven children from Bekato, said she has suffered along with her children because of the crisis. Six of her children became sick and were being treated.<\/p>\n

“There was no milk, food, or water as the well had dried up. Can you understand as a mother what it is like to see six of your children so ill?”<\/p>\n

Layla, mother of four-year-old girl Malou, said she’s worried after her daughter was diagnosed with pneumonia. <\/p>\n

“We came here from our village. We had to walk six hours on foot to come here,” Layla said. “This is the longest drought I have ever seen.”<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Hailemariam Deselegn urged the world last month to donate more towards food aid. The $1.4bn emergency appeal is the third largest in the world after those for Syria and Yemen, which are engulfed in war.<\/p>\n

Ethiopia was devastated by drought in the 1980s that – exacerbated by a civil war – killed hundreds of thousands of people and brought the country’s deadly famine global attention.<\/p>\n

\"Ethiopia<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{International charity says millions of kids face critical food shortages and waterborne disease as crisis intensifies.} At least six million children in Ethiopia face critical food shortages as a result of the worst drought in 50 years. The non-governmental organisation Save the Children warned on Friday the number of Ethiopians without enough food is rising […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-24477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","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":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24477","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=24477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24477"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=24477"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=24477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}