Nairobi: East Africa's worsening famine is one of the largest humanitarian crises in decades, a US State Department official said, pledging ‘significant' aid despite the debt ceiling impasse being debated in Washington.
The US already has pledged $5 million (Dh18.3 million) to help Somali refugees on top of a previously budgeted $63 million. Reuben E Brigety, who is responsible for State Department assistance to refugees and conflict victims in Africa, said Washington is now studying how much more it will give.
"A great nation can do more than one thing at the same time and that is what we the United States will continue to do even in the context of the financial challenges that we are facing," said Brigety, an assistant deputy secretary.
Flooding camps
Tens of thousands of Somali refugees are flooding camps in Ethiopia and Kenya in search of food after several seasons without rain decimated livestock and killed crops. Little help can reach those in the worst-hit areas because an Al Qaida-linked militant group had banned aid work, though it recently said it would lift it.
In recent days, Brigety has visited camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, and talked with mothers and children who walked for days with little food or water. Levels of malnutrition among refugees arriving at the camps are staggeringly high.
The overall mortality rate at the Ethiopia camps is seven people out of 10,000 per day — a normal crisis rate is two per day, Brigety said. Dadaab's numbers swelled to nearly 440,000 people, UNHCR said on Friday.
