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Silently, starvation stalks millions in Africa
DERA, Ethiopia (CNN) -- Drought, AIDS and preventable disease have put millions of Africans at risk of starvation. People in southern Africa, Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa stand to suffer most. The United Nations World Food Program issued a statement recently stating about 11 million people face severe food shortages in the Horn of Africa, and at least 750,000 more than originally projected are at risk for starvation in southern Africa. "While the world's attention is currently gripped by events in other regions, Africa is in crisis with thousands of people dying silently each day, " read a U.N. statement correlating the effect AIDS has on Africa food security. AIDS and treatable diseases like diarrhea, pneumonia and tuberculosis destroy people needed to help communities recover from drought and natural disasters, the statement said. In Ethiopia, relief food is holding mass starvation at bay for now, but the meals are not substantial.
"If we're lucky, we'll eat flat bread once a week," said an Ethiopian man receiving food in an assistance line. "But mainly we survive on cracked wheat." The Ethiopian government is preparing a worldwide appeal for food assistance," said Olga Keita of the World Food Programme. "We are also doing the same," she said. "You could see the condition of these children. If they are not receiving food in a few weeks, we (will) not find anybody in this village." People are grateful for the lifeline of food aid, but they prefer to have healthy land instead of international charity. Aid workers also say benefactors missed an opportunity to prevent future crises when they doled out help 18 years ago. The United States and other Western governments spent millions of dollars to send grain surpluses to Ethiopia then. Aid workers contend that money would have been better spent on long-term solutions like irrigation. In Ethiopia, there is no water for drinking or bathing. Ponds have become bowls of baked earth and trees are tinder dry. Drought grips much of the nation.
Food is available for people who have money -- markets stock tomatoes, onions, beans and potatoes. But drought and poverty are the twin evils in Ethiopia, and they feed on another. Without money, Ethiopians are doing anything to survive. A woman named Nafisa takes firewood to the market to sell so that she will have money to buy drinking water for her children. Livestock numbers are dropping because of the fodder and water shortage. The remaining animals are skeletal and fetch a lower price than usual. The selling price of cattle is "nowhere near enough. In good times, they fetch 10 times that," a local Ethiopian farmer said. "I'm just selling them instead of watching them die." An area known as Dera in Ethiopia used to be the country's breadbasket. Threshers report they don't have enough to feed themselves, and certainly not enough to sell. CNN Correspondent Catherine Bond contributed to this article.
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