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Children die as Ethiopia awaits Western food aid

GODE, (Ethiopia): Osub Abdi has already lost two children and now sits beside her painfully thin four-year-old son in a makeshift health centre in Gode, southeastern Ethiopia, wondering if he will be the next to die.

Liin Bile Abdi has tuberculosis and at seven kg (15 lbs) weighs about half the normal for a child of his height. Although some food and drugs have started to arrive from the United States, doctors have scarcely enough to keep him alive.

"He needs more than six feeds a day, but we don't have enough food now," said Dr Abdiaziz Okash. "We need more food and shelter here, and we need medicine."

Liin is one of the "skeletons on screens" which Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin says the West is waiting to see before responding to Ethiopia's appeal for food aid in the face of a prolonged drought.

There is no widespread famine in Ethiopia yet, but more than eight million people will need up to a million tonnes of food aid this year.

Europe and the United States are now pledging help, but the government and aid agencies wonder if the food will arrive fast enough to avoid a bigger disaster.

"Our food reserve is down," said Berhane Gizaw of the government's Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission. "We have managed so far, and I think we will also manage in April. The question is beyond that...in June things are going to be very serious."

Donors and aid agencies said on Tuesday the likely failure of the current rainy season means that Ethiopia will need even more food this year than previously thought.

"BELG HARVEST" LIKELY TO FAIL Rains expected from February to April have not arrived, meaning the so-called "Belg" harvest expected in June is likely to fail. The "Belg rains" is the name for seasonal rains due at this time of year.

"When the Belg fails, it will increase the number (of people needing food aid) by 1.2 million," Ben Foot of Save the Children UK in Addis Ababa said.

The government's Emergency Food Security Reserve (EFSR), normally stocked with around 300,000 tonnes of grain, has dropped to 30,000 because the West has not fulfilled its aid pledges, Berhane said.

Ten times that amount is owed by the United States, Europe and the United Nations and some of the debt is over a year old.

The debtors say they will restock the reserve in the next few months, but Berhane says they should have acted sooner when they knew a crisis was coming.

The United States pledged last month to donate 400,000 tonnes of food to Ethiopia this year, but only about half will go to drought relief and the rest to development and refugee projects.

The United States is at least moving relatively fast and the first 85,000 tonnes of food will arrive at the Red Sea port of Djibouti later this month.

The European Union said on Monday it would deliver 800,000 tonnes to the region this year.

Some 32,000 arrived in Djibouti on Sunday and a further 17,000 was expected by the end of the week.

Partly because of the U.S. shipment, more than 100,000 tonnes of food should be unloaded at Djibouti this month, with donors saying they expect similar amounts to be delivered in May and June.

Some of that will go towards restocking the ESFR, some to feeding the hungry, and will probably avert a major crisis for a few months yet.-Reuters