EthioBlog

Children in Ethiopia struggle to be free from legacy of hunger

26 Oct 2009 11:18:28 GMT

Source: International Save the Children Alliance

On the day the Ethiopian government confirmed that 6.2 million people need emergency food aid because of drought and erratic rains, Save the Children warns that half of these - around three million - are children and are the most vulnerable to malnutrition.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the famine that sparked the Band Aid movement. Ethiopia has come a long way since images of starving people aired on our TV screens, but the most vulnerable children still need urgent help to stop them from going hungry and becoming malnourished. Save the Children is working hard alongside government and non government agencies to make sure that families have access to enough food and nutritional support.

David Throp, Save the Children’s Country Director for Ethiopia, said: "Children are the most vulnerable to malnutrition in any food crisis. The work that the Ethiopian government has done over the last 25 years, supported by agencies like Save the Children, means that children now have a much better chance of making it to their fifth birthday than a generation ago. But there is still a long way to go. The challenge now is to find longer term solutions to ensure that in years to come the most vulnerable children have the opportunity to grow up free from hunger.

“Save the Children is pleased with today’s public recognition of the number of people in need of help in Ethiopia. It’s another important step to getting urgently-needed food to them. It’s vital that the government and its partners work efficiently together to deliver that help now, and to agree quickly what assistance is needed in the first half of next year to address hunger and malnutrition in children.”

The way that the government and aid agencies respond to hunger in Ethiopia has changed dramatically since 1984. New foods to tackle malnutrition have been developed along with more effective early warning systems that have dramatically reduced the under-five mortality rate by almost half in the past 17 years.

Save the Children has pioneered ways of assessing families’ ability to find nutritious food at different times throughout the year and monitoring how vulnerable populations behave when food is scarce, which means assistance can be more effectively delivered.

Mr Throp continued: "These days we've set the bar a lot higher. We aren't just trying to stop people dying, we are working to make children healthy, strong and educated so they grow up to face a better and more secure future." Midge Ure, Save the Children ambassador and Band Aid trustee, said: "We may not have realised it at the time but the Ethiopian famine was our first wake-up call to climate change. Twenty-five years on, we want to see climate change as a priority for the next generation. That's why I'm going back to Ethiopia with my daughter to mark the anniversary".

Save the Children estimates that the price tag for tackling malnutrition for children in Ethiopia is £740 million pounds a year. This would provide a package of interventions to ensure children get a healthy diet, including child benefits to deliver cash to the poorest families to enable them to buy adequate food, and to provide treatment for severely malnourished children. Children affected by malnutrition loose weight, their growth may be stunted and their brains can be permanently damaged which impairs them for the rest of their lives. It is estimated that malnutrition can reduce a country's GDP by 3-6% and cost billions of pounds in terms of lost productivity and additional healthcare spending.

More Information

The under-five mortality rate in Ethiopia in 1990 was 204 deaths per 1,000 live births. In 2007 it was 123. In an upcoming report Save the Children estimates that child and maternity benefits in Ethiopia would cost £595 million and a package of nutrition interventions would cost £146 million per year. Information from the Ethiopian government indicates that the annual loss of productivity attributable to stunting is around £150 million; iodine deficiency costs the country annually around £67 million; and lost productivity due to malnutrition over the next ten years may be as high as £7,200 million.