‘The world must act now to stop this,’ UN chief Guterres says on visit to drought-hit Somalia.
He said that 3.3 million people are in need of health support and that cholera has been developing and making hunger even worse and more dangerous.
In the last two months, there were 7,731 cases of cholera with 183 people dying.
“It’s a process in acceleration,” he warned.
But now is also “a moment of hope” because Somalia is turning the page, with a new President elected and a new Prime Minister appointed, he said.
Leving the capital, Mr. Guterres met and spoke with victims of the current drought when he visited a settlement for internally displaced people (IDPs) today in the town of Baidoa.
“If we have stability and if it rains, we can avoid famine and we’ll return home,” she told UN News.
According to OCHA, estimates indicate that over 80 per cent of these newly arrived IDPs are women and children.
For over an hour, he walked through the camp, asked question and listened to the stories of men, women and children who had come to Baidoa to seek food and water.
Some had recently resettled from the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya only to be forced to move again because of the drought.