The International Committee of the Red Cross says there is need for urgent food aid to Yemen and Somalia which had been made worse by drought and war.
Twenty million people facing starvation in Yemen and Somalia-Red Cross
The organisation adds that it needs about 300 million US dollars out of the 400 million dollars which they requested to finance its humanitarian activities in these countries and other war torn areas like South Sudan and the north-east of Nigeria.
The famine has affected more than 20 million people in the regions.
“This is not business as usual. Twenty million people facing starvation is not something that we are dealing with everyday and therefore, we really need to act now. And if we act now, especially in Yemen and in Somalia, famine can be averted. We need to learn the lessons from 2011, where the response was too slow, too little and 260,000 people died of starvation, more than half of them children under the age of 5, so we really need to act now,”
Dominik Stillhart, ICRC Director of Operations worldwide said.
Red Cross officials add that cholera which is a fatal cause of death for children is on the rise in Somalia while an average of 20 people die each day in Yemen caused by war injuries or illness.