The UN World Food Program (PMA) suspended this week the treatment of malnutrition for 650,000 women and children in Ethiopia due to the serious shortage of funds, the agency reported, which warned that millions of people more run the risk of losing access to help.
The PMA receives financing from between 15 and 20 donors, including the United States, but many of them have cut funds this year, said Zlatan Milisic, director of the PMA in Ethiopia. The agency has received exemptions from the freezing of the help of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has interrupted humanitarian work throughout the world, added, but little by 2025 so far.
More than 10 million people in Ethiopia suffer from a serious food shortage, including 3 million displaced by the conflict and extreme climatic conditions, as well as refugees of neighboring Sudan, devastated by war, according to the PMA.
Milisic said that the WFP had already reduced rations in recent months, but that their operations were now in a “break point” due to the serious lack of financing, which forced more drastic measures.
“We have not left any choice to suspend this week the treatment of 650,000 women and malnourished children, simply because we have run out of basic products and without funds,” he said at a press conference in video gin by Video from Addis Abeba.
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Malnutrition treatments are interrupted in Ethiopia due to lack of funds: PMA
A PMA spokesman later added that the people to whom the supply had been cut were in several places, including the northern Tigray and Afar regions, and that the UN agency was actively looking for financing to buy more supplies and resume treatments.
Around 3.6 million people could lose access to assistance, including some that receive treatment against malnutrition, if no more funds are received before June, Milisic added.
“I hope we get the resources and start measures to do everything possible to help them. But if they do not receive help, we will have serious consequences.”
The ethiopia food crisis has been aggravated in recent years as a result of a civil war in Tigray that lasted between 2020 and 22 years. The country also faced in 2022 the worst drought of the horn of Africa in decades.
The PMA previously warned of a return of drought conditions to the region this year.
With Reuters information.
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