Kenya food crisis
Poor rains over four seasons had killed livestock, withered crops and dried up water sources in Kenya in 2009. This, combined with a rise in food prices, resulted in a chronic food crisis. With your support we reached 60,237 people with life-saving aid.
Gamina holds her two-year-old child Abukar as his arm circumference is measured by a Save the Children worker who’s identifying malnourished children in their community in north-east Kenya.
4 million people were on the brink of starvation. One in three children in parts of north-east Kenya were suffering from acute malnutrition, according to our nutrition survey carried out in March 2009.
We spent £251,000 from our Children’s Emergency Fund, which allows us to respond immediately to a crisis, and launched our appeal. Through your generosity we raised £630,739.
How we helped
- We set up more than 83 remote outreach sites in north-east Kenya that provided over 11,900 malnourished children and women with supplementary, nutritious food, medicines and medical treatment to bring them back to health.
- Many pastoralists’ livestock – which they rely upon for survival – died in the drought. We provided food vouchers to the most vulnerable families, who could then exchange the vouchers for food. They gave pastoralists access to high-protein foods like milk and meat, reaching around 6,000 people.
- We also provided the poorest 12,000 pastoralist families with cash transfers so they weren’t forced to sell their remaining livestock, which are often their only assets.
You can help us reach other children in emergencies by supporting our Children’s Emergency Fund.
Thank you.
Photostory: "Some days we eat, some days we don’t."
North-east Kenya has had droughts for many years now, which has led to a severe increase in malnutrition among children and families in the region.
Adoy lives with her three children, Muhammad, 11, Ibrahim, 8, Ahmed, 2 and Furahia, 1. Their community is made up of former pastoralists who've lost the livestock they depended on because of drought and economic hardship. They're now having to live in urban outskirts and search for paid work.
Adoy says, 'Since food prices have gone up, I have to buy less food and feed my children less than I usually would. In the morning, they only have tea to drink, and at lunch they have tea with milk. I feel bad about serving only tea for meals, but we don’t have anything else.'
Habiba is 18. She has two children, Hamsa, 2 and Fatuma, 3. ‘I'm seven months pregnant with my third child. My husband's unemployed so we have a lot of difficulty getting food. We don't eat during the day. Some days he can bring a little food home for the evening. Some days we eat, some days we don’t.'
Albashir, 3, was brought by his mother to our treatment centre for malnourished children. Health worker Lois, who treated him, says, 'He was just skin and bones. He was so sick that when we saw him from far off we knew right away that he needed immediate treatment.'
Albashir was lucky his mother brought him to us. He got water, a micronutrient peanut paste to eat, medicine and all his immunisations, which will help him make a steady recovery.
Khadija’s son wasn't so lucky. Her 3-year-old son Abdulkhaliq died recently. 'He was very thin because we only had enough food for one meal a day. He was so weak with hunger he couldn't fight the fever when it came.' We're working to stop the deaths of young children from malnutrition across Kenya.
