The ongoing drought that hit Somalia claimed the lives of 43,000 people last year, while the United Nations warned that the death rate could rise in the first half of 2023, to reach between 18,000 and 34,000.
43,000 people died last year in an ongoing drought in Somalia that has reached unprecedented levels, researchers said on Monday.
In the first attempt to estimate the number of deaths across the country, the researchers added that half of the deaths were among children under the age of five.
The United Nations stated that the lack of rain for five consecutive seasons made half of Somalia's 17 million people in urgent need of aid, although some regions did not declare a famine last year that some experts expected.
The research, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said half of the deaths were among children under the age of five and that the crisis could be worse than Somalia's last major drought in 2017 and 2018.
The report stated that the death rate may increase in the first half of 2023, and expected that the total number of deaths during this period would range between 18,100 and 34,200.
"These findings provide a grim picture of the devastation wrought by drought on children and their families," said Wafaa Saeed, representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), during her presentation of the report in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, which sets the global standard for determining the severity of a food crisis, said last December that famine had been temporarily averted, but warned that the situation was getting worse.
Francesco Cecchi, who co-authored the study, said the failure to classify the situation as "famine" should not distract attention from the scale of the crisis.
"What we are really showing is that this is not the time to slow down in terms of funding and humanitarian response," he continued.
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