At Ayder hospital in Mekelle, the main city of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, there are lots of people and noise in the hallways, like in any busy hospital. However, the children’s section of the hospital is very quiet.
Here are children who are suffering because there is not enough food in northern Ethiopia. Mostly babies are very sick because they don’t have enough food to eat.
Their mothers are sitting quietly next to their beds, looking off into the distance, holding their babies close to them, and hoping that the little milk they have can save their babies.
They and Ethiopia are experiencing the effects of conflict and drought again. These problems have destroyed farms and crops, and caused millions of people to leave their homes.
The government says 16 million people in the country don’t have enough food to eat. Almost half of them have very little or no food at all. This means that a lot of people are not just a little hungry, they are very, very hungry.
This is the reason why Tsega Tsigabu, who is 23 years old, and her four-month-old son, Kidisty, are staying in Ayder hospital without improvement.
However, their plants did not grow and they went to Mekelle to try to stay alive. Just like many others, they were sent to a camp because they were kicked out of their homes.
Mrs Tsega’s husband was in the army, but he hurt his hand and can’t work now. She brought her baby to get a shot and the nurses quickly noticed that the baby was not getting enough food.
Mrs Tsega says that even when she was pregnant, she did not eat a healthy diet. “I wasn’t making enough breast milk, so the baby didn’t get enough to eat and became malnourished. ” I was hungry because there wasn’t enough food at my house.
“If we don’t do something now, there could be a big shortage of food,” says UK Africa minister Andrew Mitchell in an interview with the media.
The hospital doctors say that the number of very hungry and sick children coming in has doubled since 2020 when the fighting started between Tigrayan forces and Ethiopian and Eritrean armies.
In 2022, the fighting stopped, but many people, about one million, still can’t go back home and are still in the area affected by the conflict.
We went with the British Africa minister, Andrew Mitchell, to Agulae, which is an hour’s drive north into the hills. There, a clinic was checking on children from nearby villages.
He saw worried moms waiting to measure their kids’ arm size. If the arm is very skinny, the child may be malnourished. The nurses shared their charts with him and they all showed that the numbers were getting worse.
Mr Mitchell told the media that if we don’t do something now, there is a big chance of not having enough food.
“There are clear signs that a famine may happen soon. ” In my opinion, there is no famine happening in Ethiopia right now. We have the ability to prevent it. But if we don’t do something now, there is a high risk that a famine will happen in this country that has already suffered a lot because of the war.
He said that Britain will give an extra ã100m to help up to three million mothers and babies in Ethiopia get better healthcare. This money will be used to provide medicine and vaccines to stop deaths that could have been prevented.
Is it probable that there will be hunger in Ethiopia.
International organizations are careful about using a word that some consider to be inappropriate.
It means that 20% of families don’t have enough food, 30% of young children are very malnourished, and two out of every 10,000 people die every day. Only a few people think that Ethiopia has officially met those standards.
But for Getachew Reda, who is the president of the Tigray temporary regional government, those definitions are not important.
He told the BBC that there is a growing famine in Tigray. He said more and more people were facing death, and criticized the international community for not doing enough to help.
Getachew Reda, president of the Tigray interim regional administration, says there is a very bad famine happening in Tigray.
“Many people who could have been able to feed themselves are not able to and are dying from hunger,” said Mr Getachew.
“I don’t care if you call it famine, or a risk of famine, or a potential famine. What happened in 1985 will seem small if we don’t deal with the famine that’s happening now. ”
He was talking about the terrible problems in the mid-1980s when a lot of people died from hunger in Tigray and other places.
The government in Addis Ababa is mad because it disagrees that there is famine.
Shiferaw Teklemariam, who is in charge of helping Ethiopia during disasters, said that Ethiopia is being harmed by climate change. He told local governments not to make the issue political and asked them and the international community to do more.
“There is not enough rain, no enough food,” Mr Shiferaw told the media.
“The government is taking the situation very seriously, and we also ask everyone else to help too. ”
Previous times when people in Ethiopia did not have enough to eat were sometimes connected to when the leaders of the country lost power. Experts believe that the current government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, is worried about the protests.
The government is working with the UN to help with the food crisis, but the economy is not doing well and there is less money to spend.
Nobody knows exactly how bad the crisis is because it’s hard to get accurate information.
Access to media is restricted. Many places in the north are too dangerous for aid groups to go because there is still fighting, especially in Amhara.
In Tigray and the nearby Afar region, people are worried that the food shortage could be even more serious. Repeated stories from different places in northern Ethiopia show that things are getting worse.
Most people agree that the world should do more to help each other.
Last year, USAID (American development agency) and the United Nations’ World Food Programme stopped giving help for five months because a lot of the aid was being stolen, mostly to feed different armed groups.
This has made the situation worse. The world is paying more attention to problems in the Middle East and Ukraine, so Ethiopia is not getting as much focus and support.
The leader of the UN, Ramiz Alakbarov, said that this crisis has been forgotten. “He said the world is not paying attention. ”
“We feel sad for all the problems happening in other places, but we also need to remember the people living here. ” We have to get things in order and donors need to give more money.
In Mekelle, we saw the World Food Programme giving out wheat, lentils, and oil to people in need.
Hungry people wait in line with special codes that show who they are, where they live, and what they need. But they only get a little food and don’t have much money left.
Claire Nevill, who works for the WFP in Ethiopia, said that people need more than just food. They also need help to go back to their farms and grow their own food.
There are still militias and Eritrean forces in some parts of the country.
“In Ethiopia, there are many problems happening at the same time,” she said.
“We have a lack of water, people getting better from a two-year fight, prices going up, more sickness happening, and all these things are making people even more hungry and malnourished. ” If we don’t help people get food now, things will get worse.
We met Tsige Degef, 28, at Ayder hospital. Her 15-month old daughter, Bereket, was not getting enough food and was not healthy.
Her story was common. During the war, Ms Tsige’s large family had to sell their oxen to buy costly grains. When there was peace, the crops didn’t grow and there was no other options for food.
Ms Tsige was already having a hard time when Bereket got sick. She said her feet and legs were very puffy. “I was really anxious. ” She was throwing up every day. A mom is really scared when her child is sick because she does not want her child to die.
Bereket is improving and Ms Tsige thinks she might be able to leave the hospital soon. She said she hopes that she will get better soon.
“I want to start a tea store and sell things to make sure I can take care of my child better. ” I promise to try my best to make sure she doesn’t feel bad in the future.