NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – The United Nations says the Tigray region of Ethiopia is facing a “very critical situation of malnutrition” as vast rural areas where many people have fled during three months of fighting remain within 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 collapsed mostly under looting and artillery fire.
The alarm is growing over the fate of some 6 million people in the Tigray region, as fighting is as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and those backing Tigray leaders, now fugitives, who once dominated the Ethiopian government.
“The needs are extraordinary, but we cannot pretend that we do not see or hear what is happening,” Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde said in a statement on Friday after visiting Tigray’s capital, Mekele.
In one of the Ethiopian government’s most sincere public comments to date, she noted “significant delays that remain in reaching those in need.”
Ethiopia said on Friday that humanitarian aid had reached 2.7 million people in Tigray. But the UN report calls the current response “drastically inadequate”, even though some progress is being made.
With about 80% of the population still inaccessible, according to the Ethiopian Red Cross earlier this month, fears are growing that more people are dying to death.
“The next decisive weeks for hunger prevention,” the German Foreign Office said 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, an examination of 227 children under the age of 5 showed “surprisingly high malnutrition”, although it did not mention the number of cases.
It is also said 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 weak and at risk of dying.”
“Malnutrition (in Tigray) is expected to deteriorate, as households are limited to fewer meals each day,” the UN report said.
The Tigray conflict began at a vulnerable time, just before harvest and months after the regional outbreak of locusts. The majority of the population are subsistence farmers.
The UN report mentions “bureaucratic obstacles” and the presence of “various armed actors” as complications in providing aid.
Humanitarian workers described the attempt to navigate a package of authorities that included those from the neighboring Amhara region who had settled in some Tigray communities, as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea. which witnesses accused of widespread robberies and burning of crops.
The Ethiopian government denies the presence of Eritrean soldiers, although the interim government in the Tigray region has confirmed it and accused it of robbing food aid, according to a recent Voice of America interview.
The UN report describes a “serious” situation in which “COVID-19 services have stopped” in the Tigray region, displaced people sleep in 30 cases in a single classroom and host communities are under “incredible pressure”.