UFO Info Week-End

Hiis lies in a quiet corner of the feeding centre and stares out through wide glazed eyes sunk in her skeletal face

Hiis lies in a quiet corner of the feeding centre and stares out through wide glazed eyes sunk in her skeletal face. She is one year old but it is impossible to tell – her skin is wrinkled and she wheezes furiously for breath. Hiis lies in a quiet corner of the feeding centre and stares out through wide glazed eyes sunk in her skeletal face. She is one year old but it is impossible to tell – her skin is wrinkled and she wheezes furiously for breath.
The doctor comes along and gently squeezes a milky fluid through the drip taped to her tiny nose “This one is very serious She is dehydrated, has diarrhoea and lost all immunity. She won’t last long.” It is the image the world associates only too well with this part of the world.

Ethiopia has had two famines in the past 16 years and is on the brink of a third.Hiis arrived two days ago with her parents at the feeding centre in Gode, east Ethiopia, which is in the middle of the worst-hit region. Her brother Mohamed, six, died on the way and was buried at the roadside.She is one of the most critical cases in this rough thatched building that holds 250 children and is staffed by a local agency, the Ogaden Welfare Society. Others victims have swollen bellies and sores on their heads but they can sit up on their mothers’ laps and take rations every four hours Many are malnourished but few are as close to death as Hiis. They are the children Western agencies are scrambling to save as Ethiopia slides from drought towards chronic famine.The drought, one of the severest in generations, affects eight million people. Rains have failed for the fourth successive year in some regions. Wells have dried up, crops have perished and camels, the last milk source for dying children, are starting to die.While pledges of food donations have been pouring into Ethiopia, where an estimated 800,000 tons are needed to stave off a catastrophic famine, delivery of fresh water has become the new priority. Two dozen children have died in Gode since the feeding centre opened five weeks ago; almost 300 have died in Danan, 70km to the north.

Every mother tells the same story: wells going salty and drying up, the death of cattle and goats followed by a migration to other villages and the death of young children along the way, usually on the back of a donkey, which itself died later.All life is expiring here in eastern Ethiopia because of the drought. Outside Gode dozens of half-skeletal cattle carcasses are heaped on the roadside while vulture-like marabou storks cluster near by and watch patiently. More than 90 per cent of the area’s cattle and 70 per cent of its sheep have died.A handful of camels are also sitting quietly under the scorching sun They too are waiting to die, an aid worker, Edi Jama says. This is perhaps the worst news: the death of camels, which can survive for long periods without water, is a sure harbinger of chronic famine.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my lifetime, or in my father’s,” says Jama.After overcoming fears about security in this bandit-prone region, Western aid workers are arriving in Gode Much food has been pledged. Trucks have come along the treacherous road from the capital, Addis Ababa, and the first air delivery is due tomorrow,when the International Red Cross flies in thousands of tons of high-energy biscuits.Food and medicine can be driven or flown in but water is a different story. Gode is one of the few towns with a river that has not dried up but engineers from Save the Children have found bacteria levels that went off the scale in the same water source that the hospital uses.An estimated 14,000 people have struggled to Gode in the past two months Some walked for as long as 10 days. Now 2,000 of the worst-affected children are being fed by the local workers with UN food.Keh Ibrahim, who had six children, cradles her daughter, who is malnourished and struggling to stay awake The family, with 200 others, set out for Gode last month “First my cattle died, then my husband,” she says. Two days into the journey her daughter Rukia, six, died; her son Abdullahi, seven, died on the donkey’s saddle She buried them at the roadside.. Aid agencies battling to prevent widespread famine in Ethiopia today reassured potential donors that all emergency supplies would reach those affected, rather than being diverted to country’s war with Eritrea. Aid agencies battling to prevent widespread famine in Ethiopia today reassured potential donors that all emergency supplies would reach those affected, rather than being diverted to country’s war with Eritrea.
Development Secretary Clare Short confirmed yesterday that Government long-term aid to the drought-devastated east African nation had been reduced because of concerns the money would be “used to subsidise arms spending”.But aid agencies today sought to make clear the difference between this type of long-term government financial assistance, and the sort of emergency relief they are supplying.Oxfam said there was no question that any of its relief operation – which was mainly being brought into Ethiopia in the form of food or health supplies – could be diverted.Spokesman Charles Walker said: “We are concerned that people are clear the emergency aid we are talking about should carry on whether or not there is a war, and that it will reach the people in need.”What we are saying is that it is late, but not too late, and it is vital we keep the pressure up with aid.”A spokeswoman for the British office of the UN children’s agency Unicef reinforced the message, saying further resources for its work with malnourished children were vital.She said: “We are regularly in contact with our office in Ethiopia, and they assure us there is no evidence of any resources being diverted to the war effort.”All Unicef money definitely goes to the people in need.”Ms Short’s announcement stressed that the reduction in the UK’s long-term aid to Ethiopia had been balanced by a significant increase in emergency relief, which was provided “unconditionally to those who are suffering”.Hundreds of thousands of people are threatened by drought and famine in the east of Ethiopia, which has been involved in a bitter border conflict with Eritrea, its northern neighbour, since 1998..