According to a new emergency assessment carried out by the World Food Program (WFP), 29% of very young children suffer from global acute malnutrition (GAM). More than half of pregnant or lactating women are also malnourished. Health officials consider malnutrition rates of 15% and above indicative of an emergency situation where humanitarian needs are critical. In one area of Tigray, 65% of children under the age of five were malnourished. In another, the figure was 55%, with 16% suffering from the most severe acute malnutrition. A malnourished child is estimated to be 12 times more likely to die than their well-nourished peers. High level of malnutrition in Tigray ‘requires urgent action to strengthen interventions to address wasting [in the region] to prevent excess mortality due to malnutrition,” said the assessment published on Friday. Claire Nevill, WFP representative in Ethiopia, said the figures were extremely worrying and likely to worsen as the United Nations faces funding pressures, partly as a result of the war in Ukraine. WFP funding to tackle malnutrition in northern Ethiopia was “running out fast”, Nevill added. The emergency food security assessment, the first conducted by WFP in Tigray this year, paints a disturbing picture of a society struggling to recover from 21 months of war. While there is currently an uneasy truce between Tigrayan forces and troops loyal to the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and some aid is flowing in, the region still faces restrictions on basic services such as communications and banking, meaning the people do not have easy access to cash. Some aid is entering the region, but supply chains with the rest of Ethiopia have been severely disrupted. Photo: Claire Nevill/WFP Supply chains with the rest of Ethiopia remain disrupted and the assessment found that the price of staples such as sorghum and teff has “spiked” since the conflict began in November 2020. Fuel is in very short supply. As a result of these and other pressures, WFP said, 5.2 million people – nearly 90% of the population – are now considered “food insecure”, an increase of six percentage points since the last assessment. Of this, 2.4 million people (47%) are considered “severely food insecure”, which the WFP defines as having “extreme food consumption gaps”. For a famine to be declared in a particular part of the world, at least 20% of households must face extreme food shortages, at least 30% of children must suffer from acute malnutrition, and two people out of every 10,000 die a day.” due to absolute starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease’. Neville said that while the statistics on malnutrition and food insecurity for Tigray were deeply worrying, there was no reliable mortality data to lead to a declaration of famine. “We just don’t know,” he said. “But we know that in the next three months [before the autumn harvest] are critical, and if we don’t scale up our response and get that food into the hands of communities now as the lean season approaches, people will certainly be drawn closer.” Neville said it was important for the parties to the conflict to maintain the access route to Tigray from the neighboring Afar region, through which all humanitarian convoys have passed since their resumption in April. However, he asked for others to open up. “After 21 months of disruption, banking, communication and utility services should be restored, health services improved and regular economic trade with other regions, including fuel trade, restored. All of these are critical. We need to keep humanitarian supplies flowing during these critical coming months before the main annual harvest in October. Otherwise, things will deteriorate quickly.” WFP’s assessment took place in Tigray in June and included interviews with more than 3,000 families across the region, except for Western Tigray, which remains inaccessible.
