Soaring food and fuel costs mean that therapeutic foods used to treat acute malnutrition are becoming increasingly expensive and hard to source for the Horn of Africa, which faces the worst drought on record, according to UNICEF.
Christiane Rudert, the agency’s regional advisor on nutrition for Eastern and Southern Africa, told Devex that demand for nutrition treatment has reached “unprecedented levels” in countries including Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.
At the same time, responding to this demand has become harder due to rising production and transport costs for ready-to-use therapeutic foods, or RUTF, she explained.