Mon | Jun 15, 2026

KENYA - Drought affects hundreds of Somali children

Published:Friday | July 15, 2011 | 12:00 AM
One-year-old Habibo Bashir is comforted by his mother's hand as he rests at a Doctors Without Borders hospital, where he is being treated for severe malnutrition, in Dagahaley Camp, outside Dadaab, Kenya, Monday. - AP

DADAAB, Kenya (AP):

Malnutrition stole most of Habibo's eyesight and left the one-year-old close to death. Medical personnel tried to pump life back into the toddler, but she only moved when her stomach fitfully spasmed.

As her mother tried to feed her, her frail hands tried to resist the small cup placed between her lips.

"My prayer is 'God, heal my daughter,'" said Habibo's mother, Marwo Maalin, in a resigned tone earlier this week.

East Africa's drought is battering Somali children, hundreds of whom have been left for dead on the long, dry journey to the world's largest refugee camp.

UNICEF yesterday called the Somalia drought and resulting refugee crisis "the most severe humanitarian emergency in the world." The international Red Cross also warned that one in 10 children in southern Somali suffer from acute malnutrition.