Mother's journey with sick child highlights Somalia's malnutrition emergency

Somalia's Kismayo Referral Hospital is some 90 kilometres from Halima Abdullahi Ibrahim's village. When her three-year-old daughter's body began to swell, Halima carried her here, the closest place she could find medical assistance. I've been walking with my sick child for three consecutive days. My daughter developed edema because of malnutrition. Analysts say almost two million Somali children under the age of five are at risk of malnutrition. Many live in camps for internally displaced people. The current situation of the IDPs in Jubaland is very dire because due to lack of funding to the humanitarian actors operating in Jubaland. Here we have over 25,000 IDP households. There is no assistance received since 2023. You can imagine the situation the people are living in. Most of the projected malnutrition cases are concentrated in the south, where communities face disease, food insecurity, and limited access to services. We still have children who are dying because of malnutrition, because of a lot of issues like the disease of measles, we need to do more for them and that's why we are here today. We need to see how we can work with the community health workers, how we can work with local authorities and leaders, how we can work with the government and all the partners who are here to support the authorities to be more efficient together for the best interests of the child. Somalia is now bracing for El Niño, when expected flooding could displace more families and make conditions even worse.