Millions of people are facing severe hunger in the worst drought in more than a generation | World News
The medical examination area for severely malnourished children is full. They put the patient on a mattress on the floor.
One-year-old Mohamed has been given nasal drops to make sure he gets the fluids he needs.
In the bed above him, another Mohamed is being examined. At just two months old, he was born two months premature. He is the second son of his mother who is 17 years old.
She traveled 400 miles to get him to the hospital and didn’t think he would make it.
“I’m very, very sad and concerned about his condition,” she told Sky News. “I was worried he was going to die. I was very very worried and I was in pain about him and couldn’t sleep.”
The hospital’s patients in Hargeisa, the capital of the self-proclaimed republic of Somaliland, were all victims of the region’s worst drought in more than a generation.
The rains have failed for four years now. Ward’s doctor, Dr Abdul Rahman Abdulahi told Sky News he was scared right in front of him.
“If the rains don’t come quickly then the situation will get worse day by day and the number of patients will increase even hour by day that we cannot handle or cannot save them.”
Just across the Horn of Africa, they are bracing themselves for the dual effects of war and famine.
Dr Abdul Rahman Abdulahi said ‘if the rain doesn’t come quickly, the situation will get worse day by day’
The worst drought in 40 years is compounding the impact of Russian aggression Ukraine. War may be thousands of miles away, but it is pushing grain and fuel prices to unprecedented levels.
Somaliland and Somalia as a whole receive 90% of their grain imports from Russia and Ukraine, which has now been reduced to a trickle.
Russia and Ukraine account for almost a third of the global wheat supply. However, shipments of Ukrainian grain from its Black Sea ports have stalled since the Russian invasion, with about 20 million tons of grain stranded.
In the market place in Hargheisa, the capital of Somaliland, grain sellers all told us the same story. Prices have increased 75% in three months.
Grain prices in Somaliland have increased by 75% in three months
As if that wasn’t disastrous enough, the price of fuel has nearly doubled, making it more expensive to buy grain for those who need it.
In the world’s second-poorest country, water reaches most people due to trucks filling the streets with crates. Water is more scarce during drought but also much more expensive due to fuel costs, which increase by up to 60%.
The impact of the drought was made much worse by a war thousands of miles away.
Drought is now threatening the worst famine in years. The camps were packed with people who had lost any means to support their families. Parents are desperate.
Sophia was a well-to-do breeder but now she is in need
We meet Sophia, a well-to-do breeder. Now she’s in poverty and lives in a makeshift shack at the Mandera camp on the other side of Somaliland after a drought killed all of her livestock.
She told Sky News: “My grandfather was a school buff. “My father was a shepherd, I grew up in that life and ended up with 500 goats and four camels and they were all wiped out, I have nothing left now.”
In the background, they are using long sticks to pull the branches and leaves on the tree to feed the goats, there is no grass left to eat.
But getting food to those who need it will be a huge challenge.
Across the region, millions are facing severe hunger during the worst drought in more than a generation combined with the war in Ukraine.
And without international aid agencies say hundreds of thousands of people would die of starvation.
