East Africa is in the grip of a famine emergency

Earlier this month Adam Gartrell’s article flashed up on my phone screen as I walked between hospital wards in which critically unwell children are congested three-to-a-bed in rural Kenya.

The title (“Ignorant and ugly: Australian social media attitudes to an African disaster”) stopped me in my tracks – a combination of surprise that the devastation I am bearing witness to each day was reaching our isolated nation’s news cycle, and utter sorrow to see it had conjured such abhorrent comments on social media. It painted our nation as one in which our citizens are devoid of empathy, or ubuntu.

Currently vast areas of east Africa are in the grip of a famine emergency, with 16 million people on the brink of starvation and in desperate need of food, water and medical treatment. By contrast, in Australia our supermarkets groan with choice; water pours freely from a tap leaving us oblivious to its scarcity elsewhere and free, high-quality medical care is a basic human right. It seems for many it is impossible to relate to the millions of people existing – not living, just existing – in deplorable and desperate conditions on the other side of the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/24/this-is-not-natural-selection-east-africa-is-in-the-grip-of-a-famine-emergency

EU/ECHO/Anouk Delafortrie

#solar