1.3 million Kenyans Facing Hunger, Government Reveals
Two-year-old Aden Salaad, sits in a tub as he is bathed by his mother at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where Aden is receiving treatment for malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya, IMAGE/ COURTESY
Agriculture Chief Administrative Secretary Andrew Tuimur has revealed that more than 1.3 million Kenyans are facing hunger despite the Food and Agricultural Organisation saying that the figure stands at 2.5 million.
Globally about 800 million people face hunger.
World Food Programme (WFP) states that the people most vulnerable to food insecurity live in urban informal settlements and in the arid and semi-arid regions that make up 80 percent of the country’s land area.
A quarter of the population lives in these regions, which suffer from poverty, structural underdevelopment, conflict and disease. Droughts and unpredictable rain patterns exacerbate the situation, and more than one third of the country’s overall population lives below the poverty line.
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“In arid and semi-arid counties, people tend to respond to drought-related crop and livestock loss by adopting harmful coping practices, such as selling their only money-earning assets, withdrawing children from school, and undertake income-generating activities that damage the environment,” states WFP.
In the arid and semi-arid areas, around 337,000 children under 5 are suffering from acute malnutrition – with peaks of one in three in the most affected areas – and undernutrition is a leading cause of death among children under 5. Chronic food insecurity combines with limited access to health services, inadequate sanitation and hygiene, and suboptimal care and feeding practices for young children.
One in five Kenyan children are stunted, or small for their age. This is often irreversible.
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