GENEVA: More than 200 health and nutritional facilities have been forced to close across drought-hit Somalia due to deep international aid cuts, leaving more children facing life-threatening malnutrition, the UN said on Friday.
The UN children’s agency warned that Somalia’s children were “paying the price” for the dramatic reduction in international aid funding since last year.
“In Somalia today, aid cuts are closing doors to healthcare, shutting down nutrition services, and pushing water, education and protection further out of reach,” spokesman James Elder said in Geneva, speaking from Nairobi.
He stressed that some “205 health and nutrition facilities have already closed.”
The impact on children, he warned, “has been immediate,” with a 32-percent increase seen during the first six months of the year in children admitted to stabilization centers with severe acute malnutrition.
