Millions of people in five countries across the Horn of Africa are gripped by severe drought and have been for months. But now in one of those countries, Somalia, the UN says that the situation is so bad in some areas, there is famine for the first time in 20 years.
"The state of famine exists in parts of Bakool and Lower Shabelle, regions of southern Somalia. The rest of southern Somalia is close to famine. In some parts of Somalia, malnutrition rates have reached extraordinarily high levels of 50% for children under five."
The UN has officially declared two parts of Somalia to be in famine and made the worst drought in east Africa for 60 years. The areas are most affected in the south of Somalia where estimated 310,000 people are acutely malnourished. More than 166,000 Somalis have fled the country since the start of the year. This aerial photographs from NASA showed how the Sahara Desert is pushing further south into Africa and the dust clouds swirling over the area all add to the drying up of thousands of square miles of land on which millions of people are trying to eke out of their lives.
For weeks, there has been a mass migration of people from the worst affected areas, particularly in Somalia, to the vast and overflowing refugee camp at Dadaab in northern Kenya. The International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell was there last weekend and says, "doing nothing is not an option".
"Unless the international community now puts its shoulder to the wheel and significantly reinforces the effort which Britain has led so far, then I fear that many very young children will die as a result of this."
Somalia is being hamstrung by internal strife for decades with the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Shebaab group making the security situation too precarious for many aid organizations to function properly. In the last few days, Al-Shebaab has granted safe passage to aircraft-carrying relief. But the situation inside the country and increasingly along with its borders is deteriorating all the time. And a massive injection of aid is needed to try to avert an even greater crisis developing.
