John, My colleagues have taken you on a journey around the Horn of Africa, they have told you about the devastating hunger crisis that is gripping this region and introduced you to the people they’ve met who are affected the most – refugees and displaced families. This is the last of our e-mails, and I am writing it to you from Melkadida, in south-eastern Ethiopia where I work as a nutrition officer. My name is Adane Tefera. As I am sure you can imagine from the stories you have heard from my colleagues, my work as a nutrition officer in this area of Ethiopia is very difficult. I work in a clinic where we assess children for malnutrition and every day, I meet mothers who come to the clinic with their children and tell me they can’t feed their families. That they are struggling to keep their children alive. In my job I meet parents who have fled their homes and are now having to make decisions no parent should ever have to make. To take their children out of school to search for food. To skip meals. To not feed their children at all. The problem stems from climate change, droughts, and conflict. People living in Ethiopia have lost herds of livestock that they depended upon for their livelihoods. Farmers have been unable to grow crops and harvest enough to feed their families. And because of this, food has become scarce and prices for what exists have skyrocketed, making it too expensive for most refugees and local communities to afford to eat regularly. As a result, malnutrition rates, particularly among children and women, are increasing. Families who have fled their homes are the most vulnerable in a food crisis, that’s because they have already lost everything and they have no means to support themselves anymore – no job or farmland to grow crops. Recently, I met Maryam Abdi Osman when she came to my clinic with her children. She and her family were uprooted from their home and are amongst the most vulnerable. They are among the Hardest Hit by Hunger. “My children stay hungry all day sometimes, they are lucky if they get one meal.” The hunger crisis in southern Ethiopia is going from bad to worse. And at the center of the crisis are refugees and displaced families who have already fled from other horrors and have nothing left. As droughts, conflict and climate change persist, food prices continue to rise and families like Maryam’s are able to buy less and less food. “We fled because of a terrible conflict, there was fighting everywhere. There was no food, people starved to death, especially children.”
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