The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is expanding assistance in the Horn of Africa as levels of hunger soar after back-to-back droughts and the threat of famine looms. Since the start of the year, nine million more people have slipped into severe food insecurity across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, leaving 22 million people struggling to find enough food to eat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WFP Executive Director David Beasley on Thursday wrapped up a visit to drought-ravaged Somalia, where over seven million people \u2013 close to half the population \u2013 are acutely food insecure and 213,000 are already facing famine-like conditions. Beasley visited the southern city of Baardheere and met families \u2013 including malnourished children and their mothers – forced to leave their homes and travel long distances through conflict-wracked areas in search of humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople here have been waiting years for rain – but they cannot wait any longer for life-saving food assistance. The world needs to act now to protect the most vulnerable communities from the threat of widespread famine in the Horn of Africa,\u201d said Beasley. \u201cThere is still no end in sight to this drought crisis, so we must get the resources needed to save lives and stop people plunging into catastrophic levels of hunger and starvation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WFP is tripling the number of people reached with life-saving food assistance in the Baardheere area, which hosts tens of thousands of people driven from their homes by drought and conflict,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across the Horn of Africa, the drought is expected to continue in coming months, with a fifth poor rainy season forecast later this year. WFP has focused available funds, including critical emergency funding from USAID\u2019s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, on scaling up life-saving assistance in areas worst hit by the drought. WFP is targeting 8.5 million people across the Horn of Africa, up from 6.3 million at the start of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is expanding assistance in the Horn of Africa as levels of hunger soar after back-to-back droughts and the threat of famine looms. Since the start of the year, nine million more people have slipped into severe food insecurity across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia, leaving 22 million people struggling to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":896,"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/895\/revisions\/896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykenya.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}