ReliefWeb

GENERAL CONTEXT

The ongoing food security crisis in the country, together with aftermath effects of El Nino including flooding and disease outbreaks, continues to affect the lives and livelihoods of 9.7 million Ethiopians, according to Government figures. Overall food security remains severely affected until the upcoming Meher harvest season in November, with the resulting impacts on livelihoods, nutrition and health still being felt by high numbers of affected people during this critical period. Save the Children is supporting 126 stabilisation centres managed by the Ministry of Health to ensure a network of life-saving services in the worst affected areas, and has recently conducted a review of them under the essential standards project. The country office has also successfully distributed meher seed for 85,894 households (515,364 estimated populations) across drought affected intervention areas, amounting to 1,853MT with a value of around 3.5 Million USD and is currently undertaking post distribution monitoring.

Government and humanitarian partners need to sustain their scaled-up response to continue providing food assistance to some 9.7 million people in the second half of the year, while rates of malnutrition remain high and show steady increases in MAM in some areas. The National Meteorological Agency cautions about the consequences of floods due to heavy rains across the north and the likelihood of poor rains in the southern (Deyr) part of the country in the coming two months. Meanwhile, access constraints in some parts of the country are impacting the timely distribution of relief food and WFP reporting only 45% of Round 6 (July) has been distributed to date.

OCHA reports that internal displacement due to flooding caused by heavy kiremt rainfall and resource-based inter-communal conflicts in some areas increases humanitarian needs, while a substantial $22m Water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) response is crucial to contain the increasing cases of acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) outbreak. Government and humanitarian partners are prioritizing AWD response in line with the mid-year review of the 2016 HRD and the operationalized ‘National Preparedness and Response Plan for AWD. See sitreps for ETH-fl-16 and ETH-ep-16 for more information on flooding or AWD responses.