UNICEF: Three million African children risk death and disease

Agence France-Presse: Three million children in the Horn of Africa are at risk from death or disease as the effects of drought, conflict and rising food prices worsen, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Friday. "Three million childen in this region are at risk of death, diseases or the long-term consequences of malnutrition. They compromise a large proportion of the more than 14 million people critically affected and the numbers are on an alarming upward trajectory," a UNICEF statement said.

UNICEF is the latest of a number of UN aid agencies and non-governmental organisations to raise the alarm in recent weeks about the situation in Horn of Africa countries, especially Somalia and Ethiopia. The drought has just added "to the worst violence" that the region has seen for several years in Somalia and in "certain parts of eastern Ethiopia", fuelling the sharp increase in food prices of more than 200 percent in the last eight months in the most affected regions, UNICEF said….

The Horn of Africa seen from space, NASA, Wikimedia Commons