Rainfall has come too late to reverse the devastation from a six-month drought in East Africa, where thousands of weakened children could die without immediate assistance, the United Nations said on Monday. The UN Children`s Fund (UNICEF) said 8 million people in the Horn of Africa, a region spanning Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Eriteria and Djibouti, were in urgent need after the drought that killed livestock and crops.

They include 1.6 million children under the age of 5, UNICEF said in an appeal for money, water, sanitation, vaccines, protection, education and feeding programmes for drought-affected children.

Keith McKenzie, UNICEF`s special advisor for the Horn of Africa, said about 40,000 children in the region were already acutely malnourished. "These children are at great risk if we do not get at them with adequate programmes to meet their needs," he told a news conference at Geneva`s UN headquarters.

UNICEF is short of about US$54 million of the US$81 million it asked for in 2006 for programmes across the Horn of Africa, which is reeling from its most severe drought in five years. McKenzie said rains that started in April were erratic -- heavy in some areas and non-existent in others -- making it difficult to predict the success of this year`s harvest.

Dead livestock and other animals have also polluted water sources, he said, noting a prevalence of water-related diseases like malaria and cholera that can quickly kill already vulnerable children.
(Planet Ark, 16/05/2006)
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/36370/story.htm