At least 43,000 people have been killed by drought, a report released Monday by the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The report says among victims are 20,000 children under five years of age.
“The death rate was increasing as the year came to a close,” London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine professor Francesco Checchi told journalists. The hardest-hit populations are in Bay and Bakool in southwest Somalia and displaced people who have fled to the capital, Mogadishu.
In the current crisis, the UN said at least 100,000 Somalis have fled to Kenya and are living in camps, also escaping conflict in their country.
“These results present a grim picture of the devastation brought on children and their families by the drought,” Wafaa Saeed, the UN children’s agency representative said while presenting the report in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.
