Somali refugee Amina Ali feeds her kid beside her makeshift tent at the Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya, on April 14, 2015. (Xinhua/Stephen Ingati)
NAIROBI, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- About 21 million people across East Africa will require food assistance by the end of 2015, a jump from the current 11.4 million, the UN humanitarian agency said on Thursday.
The UN Office of Coordination and Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said conflicts in South Sudan and Yemen had contributed to the rise in the numbers.
"The conflicts in South Sudan and Yemen have had a particularly significant impact on increased cross border population movements," Head of OCHA, Pete Manfield, told a regional forum in Naivasha, Kenya.
Manfield said cases of severe and moderate acute malnutrition among children had soared in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Kenya.
And this trend would persist in the coming months, he said, adding additional funds were required to address the crisis.
"Immediate scale up of nutrition programming as well as for food, security, health, water, sanitation and hygiene is urgently required," he said.
South Sudanese women carry water in a UN refugee camp in Juba, capital of South Sudan, Dec. 22, 2013. (Xinhua/Lu Rui)
Manfield said that in the coming months possible natural disasters in the region could aggravate the humanitarian situation.
He expressed worries over the effect of "excessive rains" mainly in Somalia, Kenya and Uganda, saying they could lead to widespread flooding.
"This will directly affect up to a further 2 million people who will face displacement due to flooding which will see the spread of communicable diseases and loss of livelihoods," he said.
He urged the affected governments to consider increasing funds for the "short-term emergency needs".
"International humanitarian funding planned for 2016 should be brought forward to allow for prepositioning of stocks and existing development funding should be re-programmed," he said.
The two-day meeting, which ended on Thursday, was organized by East African bloc, Inter-Government Authority on Development.
It brought together climate scientists, communication experts, policy makers including ministers of finance and ministers responsible for disaster risk management from eight countries that form the Greater Horn of Africa.
