NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The United Nations says the Tigray region in Ethiopia faces a “very critical malnutrition situation”, as vast rural areas where many people have fled during three months of conflict remain out of reach. help.
The UN humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian defense forces continue to occupy a hospital in the city of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the health system has entered collapsed due to looting and artillery fire.
The alarm is rising over the fate of some 6 million people in the Tigray region, as fighting is raging more than ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and those supporting the now fugitive Tigray leaders who once dominated the government. of Ethiopia.
“The needs are enormous, but we cannot pretend that we do not see or hear what is going on,” said Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde in a statement on Friday after visiting the capital of Tigray, Mekele.
In one of the most outspoken public comments ever made by the Ethiopian government, she noted “significant delays that remain to reach people in need”.
Ethiopia said on Friday that humanitarian aid reached 2.7 million people in Tigray. But the UN report calls the current response “drastically inadequate”, even with some progress.
With about 80% of the population still inaccessible, according to the Ethiopian Red Cross earlier this month, fears are growing that more people are starving to die.
“The coming weeks will be decisive in preventing hunger,” said the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a brief statement last week, after hearing reports of a European Union envoy’s visit to Ethiopia.
The new UN report released on Friday says that even in areas that can be reached, a screening of 227 children under the age of 5 showed “incredibly high malnutrition”, although it did not mention the number of cases.
He also says that a screening of more than 3,500 children found 109 with severe acute malnutrition. The World Health Organization describes this condition as “when a person is extremely thin and is at risk of dying”.
“Malnutrition (in Tigray) is expected to deteriorate, as families are limited to fewer meals every day,” says the UN report.
The Tigray conflict started at a vulnerable time, just before the harvest and after months of a regional locust outbreak. The majority of the population is subsistence farmers.
The UN report cites “bureaucratic obstacles” and the presence of “several armed actors” as complications in delivering aid.
Aid workers described trying to navigate a patchwork of authorities including those from neighboring Amhara who settled in some communities in Tigray, as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea whom witnesses accused of widespread looting and burning of crops.
The Ethiopian government denies the presence of Eritrean soldiers, although the interim government in the Tigray region has confirmed and accused it of looting food aid, according to a recent interview with Voice of America.
The UN report describes a “terrible” situation in which “COVID-19 services have stopped” in the Tigray region, displaced people in some cases are sleeping in a single classroom and host communities are under “incredible tension”.