110 dead due to hunger, disease in Somalia

More than 100 people died in southern Somalia in the last two days from hunger and diarrhoea resulting from a drought, the country’s prime minister said, as it braces itself for widespread shortages of food.

The announcement by Hassan Ali Khaire on Saturday followed the Somali government's warning last week that the drought amounts to a national disaster.

"It is a difficult situation for the pastoralists and their livestock. Some people have been hit by [hunger] and diarrhoea at the same time. In the last 48 hours, 110 people died due to [hunger] and diarrhoea in Bay region," Khaire's office said in a statement.

The Bay region is in the southwest part of the country.

"The Somali government will do its best, and we urge all Somalis, wherever they are, to help and save the dying Somalis," said the statement, released after a meeting of a famine response committee.

Mostly children and elderly people died in villages surrounding the town of Baido, Abdullahi Omar Roble, the government's regional humanitarian chief, told the DPA news agency.

There was not enough medication to treat all of the patients, Roble said.

The drought has led to a spread of acute watery diarrhoea, cholera and measles and nearly 5.5 million people are at risk of contracting waterborne diseases.

The cholera outbreak has killed at least 69 since Friday, a local government official said.

More than 70 others have been hospitalised. 

In February, United Nations children's agency UNICEF said the drought in Somalia could lead to up to 270,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition this year. In 2011, some 260,000 people starved to death due to famine in Somalia.

UN experts have sounded a warning on deaths related to cholera and other diseases that arise from a lack of clean water.  The UN estimates that five million people nationwide need aid, amid warnings of a full-blown famine.

About 363,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia "need urgent treatment and nutrition support, including 71,000 who are severely malnourished", the US Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning Systems Network has said.

Somalia was one of four regions singled out by the UN secretary-general last month in a $4.4bn aid appeal to avert catastrophic hunger and famine, along with northeast Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

The UN humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is $864m, to provide assistance to 3.9 million people.