Ethiopia: MSF responds to alarming rates of malnutrition in Gedeo

Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has launched an emergency response in the Gedeo area of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' Region Ethiopia calling on humanitarian agencies to urgently scale up their support for internally displaced people (IDPs) in the numerous camps in the area.

MSF is concerned for the welfare of tens of thousands of vulnerable people displaced in southern Ethiopia, following an assessment that revealed alarming findings about their nutritional status, poor living conditions and limited availability of safe drinking water.

After screening children aged under five at eight IDP sites in the Gedeb woreda (A local administrative area in Ethiopia equivalent to a district) of Gedeo at the end of March, MSF teams found rates of severe acute and global acute malnutrition to be well above the emergency threshold.

While they were not part of the assessment, MSF also saw a high number of malnourished pregnant women.

“We saw an immediate need to scale up the response for the treatment of malnourished children, as the few facilities in the area were completely overwhelmed and could not offer the specialised care needed for children with complications," said Markus Boening, MSF project coordinator in Gedeo.

"One of the biggest problems is that malnourished children are arriving too late to be treated, which shows there are gaps in the community outreach component of the current response."

MSF teams are now supporting the Regional Health Bureau with a focus on nutrition. Over the past two weeks they have treated 205 children aged under five for severe acute malnutrition in two stabilisation centres.

“Those IDPs that did not move back were absorbed into host communities. However, resources in these communities are depleted and staying there means the IDPs cannot access humanitarian aid. As a result, many are now going to the new IDP sites in search of assistance,” said MSF’s head of mission in Ethiopia, Mohamed Morchid.

Assessments are on-going to identify further gaps in the provision of nutritional support and healthcare, but medical services alone cannot solve the multiple needs of this distressed population.

“It is crucial to continue mobilising efforts – at the local, regional and federal level – and to scale up the delivery of aid to ensure that people’s pressing needs for healthcare, shelter, water and sanitation and food are covered," says Morchid.

"It is also important that people can move freely and safely to reach humanitarian aid, not only in Gedeo but also in other regions of Ethiopia with internally displaced people.”