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Ethiopia: MSF responds to alarming rates of malnutrition in Gedeo

18 Apr 19 | 14 Jul 21
This article is more than one year old

Ethiopia: MSF responds to alarming rates of malnutrition in Gedeo

An MSF staff member prepares to attach an IV line to a malnourished child at the stabilisation centre in Gedeb hospital, in Gedeo, south Ethiopia. Caption
An MSF staff member prepares to attach an IV line to a malnourished child at the stabilisation centre in Gedeb hospital, in Gedeo, south Ethiopia.

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has launched an emergency response in the Gedeo area of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region Ethiopia calling on humanitarian agencies to urgently scale up their support for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the numerous camps in the area.

MSF is concerned for the welfare of tens of thousands of vulnerable people displaced in southern Ethiopia, following an assessment that revealed alarming findings about their nutritional status, poor living conditions and limited availability of safe drinking water.

After screening children aged under five at eight IDP sites in the Gedeb woreda (A local administrative area in Ethiopia equivalent to a district) of Gedeo at the end of March, MSF teams found rates of severe acute and global acute malnutrition to be well above the emergency threshold.

While they were not part of the assessment, MSF also saw a high number of malnourished pregnant women.

One of the biggest problems is that malnourished children are arriving too late to be treated

MARKUS BOENING
|
MSF FIELD COORDINATOR

“We saw an immediate need to scale up the response for the treatment of malnourished children, as the few facilities in the area were completely overwhelmed and could not offer the specialised care needed for children with complications," said Markus Boening, MSF project coordinator in Gedeo.

"One of the biggest problems is that malnourished children are arriving too late to be treated, which shows there are gaps in the community outreach component of the current response."

MSF teams are now supporting the Regional Health Bureau with a focus on nutrition. Over the past two weeks they have treated 205 children aged under five for severe acute malnutrition in two stabilisation centres.

6_2_malnutrition

127,400

SEVERELY MALNOURISHED CHILDREN ADMITTED TO INPATIENT FEEDING PROGRAMMES BY MSF IN 2022

2_1_WorldMap

149

MILLION CHILDREN GLOBALLY SUFFER STUNTING DUE TO UNDERNUTRITION

1_1_Patients

45%

OF CHILD DEATHS GLOBALLY LINKED TO MALNUTRITION

Outbreaks of disease

Local health authorities have also reported several thousand cases of watery diarrhoea in recent weeks. MSF’s response will expand in the coming days to include improving the water and sanitation conditions in some of the IDP camps and informal settlements, including increasing the access to clean water supplies and latrines.

“The camps are overcrowded and in extremely poor conditions. The people living there are at risk of outbreaks of disease. Their health is very vulnerable after being forced to move so many times,” said Boening.

MSF has returned to Gedeo only three months after closing one of its largest emergency interventions of 2018, which was launched after a massive number of people were displaced by ethnic violence.

At the peak of the displacement crisis last July, Ethiopian authorities reported that close to one million people had been forced from their homes.

By December, health indicators had improved, hospital admissions had decreased and many people had either returned to their homes or left the collective sites. Yet, the situation has dramatically deteriorated since then, as reports of insecurity, threats of violence and a lack of support led many people to return to Gedeo.

Samar is 3 years old. She came with her father to the MSF medical point to receive wound care. Samar was going with her father out of their building on the day of the explosion and the steal gate caused her facial injuries and burns. She already had reconstructive plastic surgery. MSF has established a fixed point in the Mar Mikhael and Karantina neighborhoods in Beirut, two of the areas most impacted by the blast, to provide medical support to the people affected by the explosion. The team provides wound care (dressings), rapid consultations for people with non-communicable diseases, as well as psychological first aid.

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“Those IDPs that did not move back were absorbed into host communities. However, resources in these communities are depleted and staying there means the IDPs cannot access humanitarian aid. As a result, many are now going to the new IDP sites in search of assistance,” said MSF’s head of mission in Ethiopia, Mohamed Morchid.

Assessments are on-going to identify further gaps in the provision of nutritional support and healthcare, but medical services alone cannot solve the multiple needs of this distressed population.

“It is crucial to continue mobilising efforts – at the local, regional and federal level – and to scale up the delivery of aid to ensure that people’s pressing needs for healthcare, shelter, water and sanitation and food are covered," says Morchid.

"It is also important that people can move freely and safely to reach humanitarian aid, not only in Gedeo but also in other regions of Ethiopia with internally displaced people.”

MSF in Ethiopia

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) started working in Ethiopia in 1984.

Today, our teams fill gaps in healthcare and respond to emergencies affecting local communities, internally displaced people and refugees.