Devex Dish: The malnutrition cost of the war in Tigray

Humanitarian aid workers have faced severe challenges accessing Ethiopia’s Tigray region amid an ongoing civil war that has left millions vulnerable to hunger and disease.

My colleague Sara Jerving brings us a detailed and grim look at the true scale of the damage to Tigray’s health system, a vital cog in the network for treating children with malnutrition. WFP convoys haven’t been able to reach the region in over a month, and an estimated 9.4 million people require humanitarian food assistance in northern Ethiopia. As of last week, Tigray was receiving its “all-time lowest food distribution.”

Tigray has a “zero stock balance of nutrition supplies” to support supplementary feeding and treatment of severe acute malnutrition, according to the United Nations. Fuel shortages are also severely restricting the ability to transport available supplies to people who need them.

Sara reports on how health care facilities have been deliberately destroyed and vandalized, with equipment smashed, medicine emptied from containers, ambulances seized to transport soldiers, and buildings hit by rockets. Health workers are also suffering, saying they haven’t received salaries over the past seven months amid restricted banking services.

“For very long surgery procedures, some of [the health workers] have collapsed because they are so hungry,” says Dr. Hayelom Kebede, a former acting executive director at the largest hospital in the Tigray region. Kebede was forced to flee the country, he tells Sara.

The numbers of suffering people are striking, but perhaps more so are the numbers we don’t have. A lack of access is impeding accurate accounting of the people experiencing famine-like conditions. That’s troubling at a time when WFP is already appealing for an additional $337 million to deliver emergency food assistance in northern Ethiopia.

The story is a hard one to read but provides an important glimpse into the realities on the ground in Tigray, illustrating the close link between malnutrition and conflict. (More on that below.) Do you see a correlation between instability and hunger where you live? Tell me what it’s like in your country at dish@devex.com.

Tigray: The deliberate destruction of a health system

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Weapon of war

Ethiopia is listed second on the International Rescue Committee’s 2022 Emergency Watchlist, which ranks humanitarian situations expected to deteriorate over the year. Also in the top 10 are other countries experiencing conflict, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, South Sudan, and Syria, showing the nexus between fragility and hunger. Over 100 million people in emergency watchlist countries are only able to survive by depleting key assets to purchase food.

IRC President David Miliband has condemned “conflict actors who use hunger as a weapon of war.”

Another reason for the growing hunger in listed countries is climate change, a “threat multiplier” that is pushing food insecurity to “unprecedented levels” amid higher temperatures, flooding, and other environmental conditions. COVID-19’s economic effects have also negatively affected access to food.

ICYMI: The 2021 Global Hunger Index found that COVID-19, the climate crisis, and violent conflict amount to a “toxic cocktail” of factors reversing progress on eliminating hunger.

Procurement possibilities

Later this year, the U.S. Agency for International Development is set to bid out its largest suite of awards with the nine contracts that make up its “NextGen Global Health Supply Chain.” One is a $4.1 billion contract for a procurement service agent for maternal and child health and nutrition, among other elements. My colleague David Ainsworth takes a look at what we know so far about the new contracts, which will total $17 billion.

USAID: What we know about the $17B NextGen contracts [Pro]

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Ukraine’s outsize role in global food security

A Russian invasion of Ukraine could destabilize global food prices, which continue to struggle during the ongoing pandemic. Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of wheat, making its successful harvests key to global food security. If unrest or a possible war delays or reduces planting, yield will drop and exports will fail to meet demand.

ICYMI: IMF is downgrading its global economic outlook and warning that food prices are expected to rise another 4.5% this year.

The dirt on carbon sequestration

On Monday, Lal spoke about the importance of carbon sequestration during the Global Forum for Food and Agriculture, which is focused on soil this year. While soil alone cannot offset fossil fuel emissions, he said, it has the potential to make large contributions to the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere by 2100. But farmers must be compensated fairly for their soil management efforts with $35 per ton of carbon dioxide they sequester, he argued.

ICYMI: I spoke with Lal in 2020 — after he won the World Food Prize — about the importance of soil health.

Chew on this

Mexico has seized 380,000 boxes of Kellogg’s cereal, saying the company unlawfully markets the food products to children using cartoons or mascots. [The Associated Press]

The U.S. government is dropping regulations first implemented in 1950 to prevent “food fraud” in sales of French dressing. [The New York Times]

Tonga’s recent volcanic eruption could affect as many as 12,000 households engaged in agriculture. [FAO]