In the context of the continuation of the campaign "Stop Somalia's Famine" launched by Qatar Charity to relieve those affected by drought, a delegation from Qatar Charity included Mr. Saud Al-Maadeed, Director of the Media Department, and Mr. Khalid Abdullah Al-Yafei, Director of the Relief Department, began a visit to Somalia to inspect the effects of the drought in Somalia, closely reviewing the humanitarian situation of those affected by it, providing relief assistance to them, and inspecting Qatar Charity Relief Projects.
The first day's program included a visit to the camps for displaced people on the outskirts of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and Banadir Maternity and Childhood Hospital, which houses of children affected by drought and exposed to malnutrition diseases.
Distribution of food baskets
The delegation distributed food baskets to the families most affected by the drought and who live in the Duryel, Kulms, and al-Maqbar camps. The baskets included basic food items that would suffice families for a whole month, and the number of beneficiaries reached 514 families (3,084 beneficiaries).
In addition, Adam Sheikh Hassan, Duryel camp official, stated that the Duryel camp shelters 5,000 displaced families from the regions of Lower Shabelle, Bay, Bakool, Gedo, and Middle Shabelle, who suffer from difficult living and health conditions, and this suffering increases day by day, especially in these days when the weather is hot during the day, and it is very cold at night. In addition, it is worth noting that most of the camp residents live in houses made of tree branches and the remains of worn clothes.
Moreover, Abdel Nour Mursal, Director of Qatar Charity’s office in Somalia, said, “Somalia is witnessing a harmful humanitarian situation, due to the delay of the rainy season for three years, and this has led to the fact that half of the Somali population, about 7.1 million people, are at risk of starvation, most of whom have been displaced from their cities and villages. They were stationed in camps inside large cities, after an arduous journey that lasted more than a month, on foot, in search of food to satisfy their hunger.
Furthermore, he also explained that the Qatar Charity intervention started at the beginning of the humanitarian crisis in the affected areas in all Somali states, as more than 123,738 people benefited from relief campaigns in the food and nutrition sector between November 2021 and May 2022.
Tragic human stories
The drought crisis had a great impact, especially on children due to famine, and caused the death of children and the injury of hundreds of thousands of malnutrition, and among the humanitarian cases that benefited from food aid for Qatar Charity, Mrs. Sultana Hussein Ibrahim, 26 years old mother, from the village of Lamwi, 45 kilometers from the capital Mogadishu.
Mrs. Sultana had five children, two of whom died on the way due to malnutrition, and when she arrived in Tayeb camp, two more of her children died, and she currently has one child left. Despite the psychological state that she and her husband were feeling, she expressed her thanks to the donors in Qatar for their support with a food basket that suffices her and her family for a month.
Mobile clinic
Qatar Charity operates a mobile health clinic for those affected by drought, which provides free health services, as it receives daily more than 200 patients, most of whom are children, women, and the elderly.
Muhammad Alami Hassan, 49 years old, from the village of Dimai, in Tataqa Seblali in the Lower Shabelle region, said, "I have 9 children suffering from malnutrition and malaria. I was not able to provide them with medicine. Thank God, their condition improved after I visited the Qatar Charity clinic in the camp. Many thanks to them and the honorable donors."
According to estimates by Save the Children, 386,400 Somali children suffer from acute malnutrition, while an estimated 1.5 million Somali children under the age of five will face acute malnutrition by the end of the year.
Source: Qatar Charity