Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is witnessing a deadly and escalating nutritional crisis in Ethiopia’s Afar region, requiring a major humanitarian response. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled conflict in Afar and are now facing drought, hunger, and an extreme lack of access to health care, along with the host communities.
“This upscale of humanitarian assistance to Afar needs to happen now, should have happened yesterday,” said Raphael Veicht, MSF emergency coordinator in Addis Ababa. Since April, MSF has been increasing its support to Dupti Hospital, which serves a population of more than 1.1 million people including hundreds of thousands of displaced people. The number of severely malnourished children seen at the hospital has more than tripled this year.
