Dying children reflect brutal toll of Somalia drought

Meteorologists have warned that the October-November monsoon could also fail, plunging the region into further turmoil

Arbay Mahad Qasim has already lost two children to a vicious drought, and now the Somali villager fears she could lose a third as her malnourished toddler Ifrah awaits treatment in a Mogadishu hospital.

Barely out of her teens, Qasim is among dozens of weary parents crowding Banadir Maternity & Children Hospital, which has become ground zero for the starvation crisis sweeping across Somalia as a record drought grips the Horn of Africa.

When the rains failed for a fourth consecutive season last month, UN aid agencies and meteorologists warned that a famine was looming in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

Two of her children died of hunger in the last 18 months.

- 'Worst conditions' -

Some have walked for days to find help, carrying their sick, skeletal toddlers on their backs.

"The crops failed. We lost the livestock. The river dried up," said Khadija Mohamed Hassan, whose 14-month-old son Bilal is among those admitted to the Banadir facility.

Health workers are already overwhelmed, with doctor Hafsa Mohamed Hassan telling AFP that the number of patients arriving at Banadir's stabilisation centre for malnutrition had trebled since the drought began, leading to a shortage of beds on some days.

The situation is at a tipping point, said Bishar Osman Hussein of the non-profit organisation Concern Worldwide, which has been supporting the Banadir centre since 2017.

Meteorologists have warned that the October-November monsoon could also fail, plunging the region into further turmoil.

Conflict-wracked Somalia is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis, with a grinding Islamist insurgency limiting humanitarian access to parts of the country.

Some 7.1 million Somalis -- nearly half the population -- are battling hunger, with more than 200,000 on the brink of starvation, the UN said this week.

"We cannot wait for a declaration of famine to act," El-Khidir Daloum, the World Food Programme's country director in Somalia, said in a statement Monday, warning of a race against time.

"Anyone with a plate of food in their table today must think about the child who is crying somewhere because of hunger and help them in any way possible," he said during a recent visit to a camp housing drought-displaced communities.

"We have been here for 13 days, and he looks better now," she said. 

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