NAIROBI, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Some 74.9 million people in the Greater Horn of Africa region are highly food insecure and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an East African bloc.
The two institutions said out of the number, 46.8 million people were from seven of the eight IGAD member states. These are Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Sudan and Uganda. The rest are Burundi, the Central African Republic (CAR) and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The report attributes the rise in the number of food-insecure people in the region from 58.1 million people in February to flooding caused by heavy rains.
"Heavy rains from late March through April have led to severe flooding, especially in Kenya, Somalia, Burundi and Tanzania, causing loss of lives and livestock, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, and destroying farmlands and critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges and dams," they said in an April report.
"Despite increased agricultural performance in some parts of the region as a result of the enhanced rains, increased levels of acute food insecurity are probable in the severely affected areas," the institutions said.
They observed that the nutrition situation across the region remained concerning, largely driven by conflict, displacement, food insecurity, infectious diseases and poor water, hygiene and sanitation conditions.
The bulk of those who are food insecure (20.4 million) are in DRC, followed by Sudan at 12.8 million and South Sudan at 4.6 million, according to FAO and IGAD. "The nutrition situation in Sudan is rapidly deteriorating, marked by an alarming increase in acute malnutrition cases, even as parts of the country face a progressively increasing risk of famine," the report said.
It added that apart from the food crisis, the Greater Horn of Africa region is also grappling with multiple disease outbreaks, including cholera, malaria, measles, dengue, yellow fever, and polio, as wetter-than-normal conditions observed over most parts of the region heightened the risk of water-borne and vector-borne diseases due to flooding.
The Horn of Africa is expected to experience more rains between June-September, according to the latest forecast by IGAD's Climate Prediction Center.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), some 473 people lost their lives in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, and Tanzania due to flooding between March and April, with the rains affecting over 1.6 million people in the region. ■
