24,000 people suffering from severe acute malnutrition have been admitted to MSF programmes in the Oromiya and Southern Nations and Nationalities People’s (SNNP) regions in the South of Ethiopia. Programmes are still being opened to meet the needs of the people, but in some places they have also closed, with severe acute malnutrition now on the decline.
"When we began the intervention in mid-May, we were opening more and more nutrition centres as quickly as we could and severely malnourished children were coming in huge numbers. Over the past month, the pressure on MSF activities for the treatment of severe malnutrition has been slowly declining in most places,” explains Renzo Fricke, emergency coordinator of MSF nutritional activities in the South of Ethiopia. “For the children who were the most in danger, the treatment has been effective; for the others, the beginning of the activities for moderately malnourished children has limited the occurrence of new severe cases”.
The teams in 26 of the nutrition centres also admit moderately malnourished children. 2.500 tons of enriched flour, more than 200 tons of oil and more than 300 tons of other food (lentils, maize, sugar) have been sent to the field and are being distributed directly to the beneficiaries by MSF teams. This supply of food has generated a huge hope among the population as a much larger proportion of people have a chance to get admitted onto MSF’s programmes. At some feeding centres, this has caused some unforeseen problems and staff are having to develop crowd control techniques.