By Caroline Copley GENEVA | Fri Jul 8, 2011 1:35pm EDT GENEVA (Reuters) - The lives of half a million children in the Horn of Africa are at risk, international aid agencies said on Friday, as the worst drought in decades forces thousands of people to flee their homes each day. High food prices and the driest years since the early 1950s have pushed many poor families in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia and Djibouti into desperate need, UNICEF said. "We have over two million children who are malnourished. Half a million of these children are in a life-threatening condition at this stage -- a 50 percent increase over 2009 figures," UNICEF spokesman Marixie Mercado told a news briefing. Child malnutrition rates in some camps are at least 45 percent, triple the emergency threshold, Mercado said. Child mortality rates are also very high. "At one camp in Ethiopia it is above the emergency threshold of four deaths per 10000 children per day and that is also the case in the Turkana district of Kenya," she said. UNICEF has appealed for .9 million to help treat seriously malnourished children across the region over the next three months. It plans to set up child immunization campaigns, especially against measles which can be deadly in unvaccinated children, and provide safe water and better sanitation. CHILDREN DYING ON WAY TO CAMPS The number of people in need of food assistance across the Horn of Africa region is expected to rise to 10 million from previous forecasts of 6 million, the ...
Keywords: paul, lawrence, dunbar, nickel, sack, somalia, wmnf
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