via UN: Africa, Zim face Strongest El Nino – New Zimbabwe 11/11/2015
AT least 11 million children in eastern and southern Africa face hunger, disease, and water shortages as a result of the strongest El Nino weather phenomenon in decades, the United Nations children’s fund said.
Severe drought and floods are causing malnutrition and increasing children’s vulnerability to killer diseases such as malaria, diarrhoea, cholera, and dengue fever, Unicef said on Tuesday.
“The consequences could ripple through generations unless affected communities receive support,” it said in a statement.
El Nino, caused by Pacific Ocean warming, has caused debilitating drought in several parts of Africa, including Malawi and Zimbabwe.
The worst affected country is Ethiopia, which has the second-largest population in Africa and is suffering through its worst drought in 30 years. More than eight million Ethiopians need food aid, and the number could rise to 15 million by early 2016, the United Nations said.
At least 350 000 Ethiopian children have severe acute malnutrition, Unicef said, meaning they are likely to die without therapeutic feeding.
In Somalia, flash floods have destroyed thousands of makeshift homes and crops, with further rains expected to increase the number of people in need of life-saving aid above the current 3.2 million.
El Nino is forecast to continue strengthening into early 2016, causing more floods and droughts and fuelling Pacific typhoons and cyclones. El Nino is not caused by climate change, but scientists believe they are becoming more intense as a result of it.
Unicef’s executive director, Anthony Lake, said he hoped the humanitarian crisis caused by El Nino would focus minds at UN talks in France starting on November 30 to secure a new global deal to slow climate change.
“Its intensity and potential destructiveness should be a wake-up call as world leaders gather in Paris,” Lake said in a statement.
“As they [world leaders] debate an agreement on limiting global warming, they should recall that the future of today’s children – and of the planet they will inherit – is at stake.”
COMMENTS
Yes and his name is Bob
Noblemen and people of high standing, whether sceintists or numerologists, can say whatever they predict about the weather phenomenon of today-tidal waves,typoons,tornadoes,cyclones,heat waves and drought and their causes but allas have we not realised that all these catasrophies have been caused by our own actions.Remember no man was there when this earth was put in place by the one who created it and gave life to it through his means and understanding.Ok,how do we justify that the atomic tests and bombings in the 1940s was justified and approved by nature itself and did the sceintists of that time concluded the effects of their ‘science’ was going to last for how long exactly or they knew they had invented something that would begin the end of the earth and some powerful obsessed people controlled these scientists to proceed with this devastating project for bad intentions.Do we think there is going to be someone who is to come down from heaven to warn us of these and many other consequencies we are facing because of our actions.Human beings have infringed the natural laws for a very long time.Leaders have nothing to help the situation but they worsen because they want power,even prophets cant do anything except making popular publicity-they cant tell people the truth.Who is really sure that God is not angry with us for not looking after this earth properly.Yes we will all die from these slow but very painful catastrophes we have caused.This is just the beginning.Those who think money and power can serve them are day dreaming.The only mechanism of surviving this time of terror is to get read of our psychological defects maybe we will be saved when the earth is to breath its last-
The elephant in the room is population growth. No one wants to talk about this, or to vigorously promote birth control for a better life. And “save the planet”
Anyone with half a brain should be able to see if you have death-control (medicine) then this must be matched with birth control.
But it seems, most cannot!