East and Southern Africa

Save the Children deploys emergency cholera task force to respond to outbreak

Workers at Save the Children-supported health clinics and hospitals in Puntland – one of the areas hardest hit by drought in Somalia – are seeing a significant increase in severe malnutrition cases among children coming through their doors.

More than one million children in war-torn South Sudan risk starvation, Save the Children is warning, as a famine is declared in the country’s Unity State.

Tens of thousands of families are abandoning their homes across drought-stricken Somalia in search of food, water and viable grazing land amid alarming indications of the breadth of the food crisis gripping the nation.

Local government authorities and Save the Children field offices are reporting that hundreds of trucks a day have been arriving in the coastal regions of Puntland over the last six weeks carrying families and their livestock from as far as Somaliland, simply because they have heard there had been some fleeting rain just before Christmas.

Millions of children in Somalia risk starvation, and even death, unless urgent aid is provided by June, Save the Children is warning.