UNICEF: 100,000 Children in Tigray Suffering Life-threatening Malnutrition

GENEVA - The U.N. Children’s Fund warns an estimated 100,000 children in northern Ethiopia’s Tigray province are at risk of life-threatening severe acute malnutrition over the next 12 months.  This is a tenfold increase over the annual average caseload in this war-torn region. 

A UNICEF official who has just returned from Tigray says her agency’s worst fears about the health and wellbeing of children in this war-torn region have been confirmed. Marixie Mercado says the malnutrition crisis has worsened because of extensive systematic damage to the food, water, health care, nutrition and sanitation systems upon which children and their families depend for their survival.      She says a massive scale up of humanitarian assistance in the region is needed to reverse this catastrophic crisis.