AFRICA/SOMALIA -Famine emergency is still far from resolved

Mogadishu (Agenzia Fides) - The Somali Prime Minister denies that the population of Mogadishu is dying of hunger, contradicting the United Nations and the sad landscape of increasingly crowded fields of malnourished people. After years of civil war and drought seasons, the United Nations in July 2011 declared a state of famine in three areas of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group Al Shabaab, an ally of Al Qaeda, which is in contrast with the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), and had blocked access to many Western aid agencies. Since September, famine has spread to three other areas of the country, tens of thousands of people have died and 750,000 live hunger. But last December, humanitarian aid and the rains had started to improve the situation in some parts but not in the refugee camps full of desperate and starving people.
In Mogadishu, there are over 300 camps hosting 185,000 displaced persons, some 18,000 poor and needy people living in shelters covered with plastic sheeting and cardboard in the village of Maaji, where the government has never intervened. Dismayed by the comments of the Prime Minister, aid workers in Mogadishu say that things are improving but the emergency is still far from resolved. According to the Somali Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organisation (SORRDO), in the month of August 2011 there were many cases of acute malnutrition, and even if the situation is somewhat improved, new cases emerge every day. In the center run by the organization, infants are weighed to determine their level of malnutrition. Bags of food have been distributed through the World Food Programme (WFP). An outdoor kitchen with dozens of huge cauldrons of tin have been set up offering polenta and soup to 6 000 people who line up every day. According to the United Nations this is the most serious humanitarian crisis in the world. (AP) (Agenzia Fides 02/01/2012)