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Somalia

Somalia: Drought Response - Situation Report No. 5 (as of 23 April 2017)

Attachments

Highlights

  • The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate and the possibility of famine in 2017 persists. There is also a possibility of El Nino occurring towards the end of the year.

  • Rains have started in Somaliland, western parts of Puntland, Bari and Nugaal regions, while Lower Juba, Lower Shabelle and the coastal areas of Galgaduud and Mudug have remained dry.

  • The humanitarian situation in Baidoa continues to be of serious concern and host communities have generously taken in more than 127,000 newly displaced to Baidoa since November 2017. Humanitarian partners are scaling up multi-sectoral assistance to assist internally displaced and host communities in coordination with authorities.

  • NGOs and UN agencies continue to massively scale up response and are reaching millions of people with lifesaving food, water, nutritional and health services as well as shelter, non-food items, protection services and livelihood protection throughout the country in coordination with Federal and local authorities. Further scale-up over the coming weeks is critical across all clusters.

  • Food Security partners are delivering a combination of lifesaving interventions and emergency livelihood support to rural areas, home to 87% of people in IPC Phase 4 (Emergency). Around 38,000 households are receiving seed vouchers to plant during Gu and cash vouchers for 3 months – i.e. the duration of a planting season. The anticipated production of cereals alone is around 55,000 tonnes by June – enough to feed more than 800,000 people for six months.

  • Water and sanitation continue to be among the top priorities but funding levels are not keeping pace with the growing needs. Additional funding is urgently required to sustain the response and further scale up beyond April, when most of the resources for WASH are expected to be exhausted. Furthermore, shelter and non-food items are still significantly underfunded, although the need for emergency shelter and non-food items continues to increase with the new displacements and onset of rains.

  • Unprecedented levels of funding for humanitarian action have been contributed for Somalia this year. Donors have moved quickly to generously support scale-up of response and close to US$600 million has been made available or pledged for humanitarian response since January.

6.2m People in need.

2.9m in IPC Phase 3 and 4

599,000 Internally displaced due to drought since November 2016 as of 14 April

127,000 Displaced arrivals in Baidoa since November 2016 as of 14 April

454 New nutrition centres established across Somalia since February

2.0 AWD/cholera case fatality rate as of 16 April (558 deaths to 28,408 cases)

$600m Total humanitarian funding in 2017

Situation Overview

According to the FAO-managed Somali Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM), the cumulative rainfall forecast until 25 April 2017 shows moderate to heavy rains in Somaliland and western parts of Puntland, with a few pockets of Bari and Nugaal receiving light rains during the forecast period. Other places that are expected to receive good rains include the southern and central regions bordering Ethiopia.

Moderate to heavy rains are also foreseen in the Ethiopian highlands which may lead to increased river levels inside Somalia towards the end of the week. Lower Juba, Lower Shabelle and the coastal areas of Galgaduud and Mudug regions are expected to remain dry. The occurrence of El Niño is now at over 85 per cent possibility towards the end of the year, which will affect the Deyr season (Oct – Dec), but not the Gu. Acute malnutrition is sharply increasing in most parts of the country, which increases the likelihood for diseases. The nutrition situation is further deteriorating much more than anticipated and global acute malnutrition has reached as high as 26.4 per cent in Badhan (Sanaag), 23.0 per cent in Abuduwaq (Galgadud), and 19.6 per cent in Hudur (Bakool). All results are well above the critical level of malnutrition.

Compared to the previous week, the number of Acute Watery Diarrhea/cholera cases has decreased from 3,128 to 2,984. The total number of cases recorded since the beginning of the year has reached 28,408, including 558 deaths.

The Case Fatality Rate has been brought down from 2.1 per cent last week to 2.0 per cent as of 16 April, but is still far above the 1 per cent emergency threshold. Cases of measles continue to rise across Somalia. A total of 4,988 cases have been reported as of 15 April. This number is three times higher than the number of cases reported during the same period last year. Of the reported cases, 52 per cent are of children under the age of 5. Suspected cases of measles were reported from all regions in 2017 – the majority of the cases were reported in Banadir (1,285), Togdheer (913), Lower Shabelle (510), and Sahil (316) regions. Health partners have treated some 290 suspected cases at the south Gaalkayo General Hospital between the first week of March and 14 April.

Massive drought-related displacement continues across Somalia, with most of the displaced people moving from rural to urban areas or other rural areas where they anticipate to receive aid. In the week ending 14 April, 28,000 drought-related displacements were recorded by the UNHCR-led Protection and Return Monitoring Network (PRMN), representing a slight decrease from the 33,000 new displacements recorded the previous week. As of 14 April, over 599,000 people have been displaced since November 2016 as a result of the ongoing drought, based on PRMN figures.

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