Report: 43,000 estimated dead in Somalia drought last year

20/3/2023 19:14

        A new report says an estimated 43,000 people died amid the longest drought on record in Somalia last year and half of them likely were children.
        
        It is the first official death toll announced in the drought withering large parts of the Horn of Africa.
        
        At least 18,000 people are forecast to die in the first six months of this year.
        
        "The current crisis is far from over," says the report released Monday by the World Health Organization and the United Nations children’s agency and carried out by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
        
        
        Somalia and neighboring Ethiopia and Kenya are facing a sixth consecutive failed rainy season while rising global food prices complicate the hunger crisis.