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Somalia drought hardships linger

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 8, 2006

WAJID, Somalia - Hediga Mohamed made sure to tie a string of tiny wooden beads around her starving 4-month-old baby's neck for good luck when they showed up at a clinic here 15 days ago.

"It's working. She's getting better," Mohamed said Thursday at the clinic where she has been staying while baby Rukia is being fed fortified milk and cereals.

In this impoverished and violence-racked east African country, thousands of people - particularly children under 5 - are still suffering from severe malnourishment linked to last year's scorching drought despite heavy rains that have inundated the region in recent months.

"Once your cattle and your goats are dead, even when it rains they don't come back," said Penny Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.

The recent rains have interrupted any attempts to recover from the drought. Since October, flooding and related waterborne diseases have killed 230 people in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.

Salada Somo, 30, said the drenching rain simply washed away fields that had been too dry to grow crops. Her youngest of four children, 2-year-old Habiba, has suffered the most from the lack of food, Somo said.

"If I did not come here my child would die," Somo said as her daughter was examined by a nurse for Action Against Hunger, which operates the clinic. At 14 pounds, she's half the normal weight for a 2-year-old.

Vanessa Cagnion, the nurse in harge of the general nutrition program at the clinic, said that since the facility opened in March, the group has treated more than 600 people.

[Last modified December 8, 2006, 01:35:57]