Red Cross Blogs

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The Kenya Red Cross is managing Ifo II West refugee camp in Dadaab and providing essential health and nutrition services, psycho-social support, security training and hygiene promotion services in Ifo II East. At the request of the UN Refugee Agency it is also taking on other health, water and sanitation services that were previously provided by other agencies.

The photo gallery below shows some of the health and sanitation work the Red Cross is carrying out in Dadaab.

Donate to the East Africa Food Crisis Appeal

Read blogs and stories about our work in East Africa

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Tags: East Africa, East Africa Food Crisis Appeal, healthcare workers, Kenya, kenya red cross, refugees, water and sanitation

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This is a guest post by Henry Makiwa, British Red Cross senior media relations officer, who recently went to Burkina Faso. There, he revisited Sorhow Mohamed. Two months ago, Sorhow’s family was already struggling for food – now they have almost run out. 

It’s high noon in Tin Akoff village in north-west Burkina Faso. Temperatures are shaving 50 degrees celsius on the thermometer. Not a cloud hangs in the skies, not a bird dares to come out, and scatterings of cattle and goats hide in the shade of leafless trees.

Everything here is serene and quiet, except for some hushed chatter of two sisters who watch over a feeding toddler – while shooing off a troublesome goat that’s constantly attempting to eat from the same bowl as the minor. 

From the entrance of his small dome-shaped hut, 71-year-old Thiombiano L’Oudalan beckons us in. This grass-thatch and canvas structure – a whole twenty-four square metres of it – is home to Thiombiano, his wife Sorhow Mohamed and their eight children. 

Fighting for the family 

Sorhow is not at home today as she is at a village women’s networking group, discussing how they may best support their families during the current challenging times. 

Thiombiano says: “She is very resourceful. She doesn’t give up – she never tires of fending for her family. 

“We have been fortunate to get the Red Cross vouchers so we have had some grains and rice for food. What you see the child eating outside, however, is the last bowl of rice in this house.” 

Bad harvests 

Residents of the small village of Tin Akoff in the Sahel region of northern Burkina Faso are predominantly farmers. They live off their land, growing the staple grains such as millet and sorghum every rainy season. 

Thiombiano tells us that the last rainy season was “unkind” and crops failed, resulting in food shortages for his family and 15.6 million other people across west Africa. 

He explains: “Last year the situation was bad but it has never been as bad as this year. First was the drought and then the locusts came and ate everything left on the fields. 

“For a while during this drought, we have relied on selling our livestock at the local market – we hardly have any animals left anymore. The price of food at markets has risen dramatically by two or three-fold in certain circumstances. We are in grave danger and we do not know what to do,” 

Nothing left to give 

The Red Cross has completed the first phase of its support to 1,100 vulnerable families in Tin Akoff. Each family has received ten food vouchers to be exchanged for bags of rice, cooking oil, salt and sugar at local markets and shops. 

However, the Burkina Faso Red Cross is struggling to fund further work in Tin Akoff, Oudalan and Soum. According to Alid Adigrass, the Burkina Faso Red Cross president for the Tin Akoff, it is uncertain when the area will get more support. He says: “We don’t know when the next distribution will be under these conditions. It’s really bad. 

“Families have been getting vouchers – which are like a currency to buy basics from local merchants – while mothers of young children have been getting cereals from Red Cross stocks. These are now running out which is why we desperately need the international community to give us a helping hand.” 

The British Red Cross has launched an appeal to help the vulnerable in the Sahel region of west Africa. This appeal will help support people in the region now, and reduce their future vulnerability. 

Since we last visited Sorhow’s family, the situation has got considerably worse. Help us stop the situation deteriorating even further for millions of people. 

Donate to the West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

Read more about Sorhow and other people affected by the food crisis

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Tags: Burkina Faso, food crisis, food insecurity, Sahel, west Africa, West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

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“Aid money only goes into the pockets of rich leaders, despots and tyrants, so why bother donating?” 

Corruption is an issue in some of the countries where the Red Cross works, so it is understandable that donors want to know where their money is going. 

Both in the UK and overseas, we are extremely careful to ensure that your donation reaches the people who need it most. 

The Red Cross operates internationally through a network of Red Cross or Red Crescent National Societies, which deliver aid at a local level. All money donated to British Red Cross emergency appeals stays entirely within the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and is used directly to support the people you wanted to help. 

We are used to working in challenging environments, and Red Cross staff and volunteers are always present on the ground to monitor the situation and manage the operation, ensuring aid reaches those who need it most with transparency and accountability – both to those donating funds and to those in need of support. 

“We’ve given billions and billions in aid, why are people still hungry?” 

Part of Africa been suffering food crises for decades, so it’s understandable that people who donated in the 1970s, 80s and 90s want to know why, years later, hunger has not gone away. Why, after millions – perhaps billions – of pounds have been donated to the continent, are they being asked to help again? 

Because – sadly – it is an incredibly complex issue. Droughts are natural and recurring in many areas of Africa, but in recent years the resilience of vulnerable people has decreased, making them less able to cope. High food and fuel prices, displacement and conflict – coupled with underlying poverty and recurrent drought – have added to people’s vulnerability. 

Many communities are trapped in a vicious cycle of food insecurity – not having enough food makes people more susceptible to malnutrition and ill health, and raises the risk of death. Being unwell and lacking sufficient energy makes it harder to make a living and buy or grow food. 

While aid can effectively provide a short-term solution to hunger, long-term programmes to reduce people’s vulnerability are one way to break the cycle. The Red Cross is helping people prepare for – and cope with – droughts and other risks, so that in future their communities will be more resilient to future disasters. 

However, our ability to respond to a crisis is dictated by the amount of money we receive, and when. Often, the money doesn’t start coming in until the tragic stories are splashed all over the papers. 

By the time stories about babies dying of malnutrition hit the news, protecting, recovering and strengthening people’s means of making a living is no longer enough. The crisis reaches a point where only emergency aid can stop people dying. 

In the current crises the Red Cross is working across the African continent, including in Burkina Faso, Mali and Kenya. We are unapologetic about doing whatever it takes to save lives. 

It is terribly sad to see hunger in some African countries happen again and again, but there is no quick fix for such a huge problem. Money donated to us will help stop people suffering in the short term and increase people’s long-term ability to cope. But some of the causes of, and therefore solutions to, these problems are political – the Red Cross cannot end conflict or control food prices. 

Read more about why crises don’t make the news and what we’re doing in west Africa 

“Isn’t this a population problem – shouldn’t people who can’t afford children stop reproducing?” 

Some people say that families in developing countries shouldn’t have so many children if they can’t feed them – why not stop them having kids by promoting birth control? 

While the global population is on the rise, the world’s current hunger problem isn’t due to the number of people on the planet. The world produces enough food to feed everyone – including large families in developing countries – and this is even after the third of it we waste has been thrown away. 

A real issue is poverty: through no fault of their own, many people around the world can’t access the food they need – properly nutritious food – mostly because they cannot afford to buy it, particularly now that food prices have risen to record levels. 

Related to poverty there are other issues – though people may wish for smaller families, they sometimes cannot afford the means to effectively plan them. Furthermore, in some cultures people are expected to have large families, so that children can support parents in their old age. 

One of the best ways to give people control over their lives is to ensure they have access to education and are able to make a living for themselves. Learning about family planning and birth control is part of this process, but certainly not the only part. 

Read more about feeding the world’s population

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Tags: Africa, East Africa, East Africa Food Crisis Appeal, Horn of Africa, Sahel, west Africa, West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

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This is a guest post by Henry Makiwa, British Red Cross senior media relations officer, who visited Burkina Faso last week.

My earliest memory of a drought goes back to 1990 – 91 as young lad growing up in the Zimbabwean countryside. I remember noticing the gradual dropping of water levels in the local lake where we used to fish and speedboat with my brothers on weekends.

Massive islands and rock boulders were steadily surfacing where stretches of deep blue waters used to cover. On land, the animals sauntered in forlorn despair as grass and leaves – their food – wilted away in the pitiless heat that cloaked the land. Not so long after, we noticed villagers around us and from farther away, frantically drive their animals to the town markets to sell them so that they could attain some money for grains. At the drought’s worst, aid trucks began travelling across the countryside giving relief food to people.

Fortuitously my family was spared much of the lacking for food, as we were fortunate to have saved enough from the previous harvest.

Nonetheless, this had been a harrowing time. One that got burned on my juvenile psyche as an abiding recollection and definition of a “drought”.

And so as I landed at Ouagadougou international airport, Burkina Faso, with fellow Red Cross colleagues and members of the press, I had a formed estimation of the crisis that has gripped the Sahel region of West Africa since late 2011.

Events on the ground proved to be grimmer.

I saw dry rivers, parched lakes, failed crops, empty granaries, dying livestock, strewn animal carcasses and; the young and old trading what little assets and precious possessions they had left, for food and drink.

For many Burkinabe, life is now an existence of taking a day at a time. This irksome situation is made even bleaker by the dreary weather forecasts which predict a continued dry spell. Normally, rains are expected as early as May, cueing a planting season. Harvests – which would bring much needed respite to the food crisis – traditionally arrive after August.

As the Daily Mail reported today, women and children are the worst affected by the food crisis in Burkina Faso. Images carried in the paper testify the extent of the strain on the world’s third poorest country’s already stretched health delivery system.

Doctor Anice Kroda is the head physician at Djibo hospital, a few miles off the Burkinabe border with Mali. He says the crisis has been exacerbated by the influx of refugees from the country’s northern neighbours.

Mali has been in the throes of armed conflicts following a long-running rebellion by ethnic Tuaregs in the north, and a military coup carried out by the army in the past month.

Dr. Kroda said: “The situation is really severe. Here we take the most malnourished children – particularly the ones that have complications – and we treat them for malnutrition.

“Many would have died were it not for the support of the Red Cross which pays for their treatment. We are in a very dry zone here so the population is malnourished, so with the drought that’s hitting us now, things are very bad. Last year there wasn’t such a serious problem, but this year we are going to see a much higher number of children. The large number of refugees coming into the area is also making things worse,” Dr. Kroda added.

This is the situation pertaining in only one district of one of the seven Sahelian countries affected by the food crisis. Aid agencies say that over 13 million people in Mali, Chad, Senegal, Niger, Gambia, Mauritania and Burkina Faso face severe food shortages.

The Red Cross urgently needs more funds so it can take action to avoid the situation in Mali and other countries deteriorating as it did in the Horn of Africa last year. Please give what you can today to our appeal.

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Tags: Burkina Faso, Chad, food crisis, food insecurity, food security, Mali, Mauritania, niger, Senegal, west Africa, West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

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Emptying your savings account to buy food is a last resort. But that’s the equivalent of what farmers in Mali are doing by selling off their cattle to buy cereals which will feed their families for longer.

Cows, goats and sheep are important assets for many people in this region but, with food prices rising beyond the reach of most families, people have no choice but to cash in on them.

“Selling one cow will buy enough cereal to last a small family a couple of months, but the number of animals people have is diminishing quickly,” says Kati Traore, chief of Sakabala village. “Another problem is that so many people are selling, the price has gone down by around 10 per cent.

“I have three wives and 15 children, but we have nothing. Normally when we prepare millet the residue is used to feed the animals but now we are eating it ourselves. We’ve also reduced the size of our meals.

“But we don’t have enough animals to sell to last us till our next harvest in November. I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know how I can help my village.”

Struggle for food

Survival is always a challenge in the Sahel, an arid region just below the Sahara desert, but the ‘lean season’ doesn’t usually start till April, with malnutrition rates peaking in August. Last year, lack of rain caused crops to fail in many communities in Mali, as well as Mauritania, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Senegal.

Across the region, up to 23 million people now face a massive struggle to afford food.

“The rain stopped early last year and since September we’ve had no rain. We worked on our fields but they didn’t produce any crops,” Kati says. “Normally our harvest lasts us till August the following year, but since November we’ve had no reserves. Now we have to pick wild fruits and many people have left to look for work in the cities or abroad. When we have to start selling our animals, we hope to God for help.”

Red Cross support

In February, Malian Red Cross volunteers distributed a month’s supply of rice, oil, salt and sugar to 8,200 people in villages in west Mali. They also provided information on good practices for nutrition, food storage, health and hygiene to help prevent malnutrition.

Working with the Malian government, the Red Cross is now finalising plans to scale up its response to help save lives in some of the most affected communities, including Sakabala.

But, given there have been three major food crises in the region in the last decade, investing in long-term programmes that build communities’ resilience is also vital. For example, the Malian Red Cross and its partners will help farmers diversify their livelihoods so they are no longer solely dependent on the rains.

The Red Cross urgently needs more funds so it can take action to avoid the situation in Mali and other countries deteriorating as it did in the Horn of Africa last year. Please give what you can today  to our appeal.

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Tags: food crisis, food prices, livestock, Mali, Sahel, West Africa Food Crisis Appeal

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