Jun 3 , 2023
Over 18,000 children under five and more than 4,000 women in displacement sites in Amhara Regional State require supplementary feeding due to malnutrition, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). The ongoing conflict in neighbouring Sudan has also forced 48,000 border crossings into the regional state, further putting pressure on the struggling social infrastructure. With the North still recovering from the two-year war, there is an ongoing widespread shortage of medical supplies in the Afar Regional State. Over the past few weeks, almost 19.5tn of medical supplies were dispatched to over 400,000 patients in need of immediate relief. The UN office indicates that about 20 million people in the country require food assistance. The report also highlights "a worsening humanitarian situation" in Western Oromia Regional States, with 800,000 displaced people. As funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan envisaged by the Office is still lagging, having only met 20pc of the four billion dollars required, a sustained demand for funding from developed nations is indicated within the report. It concludes by stressing the urgency to secure additional funding to tackle both the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by the war in Sudan as well as fulfil the prior funding needs for Ethiopia.