UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who visited the country on Tuesday — his first field trip since he took office in January — said the situation in the country was both tragic and regrettable.
The United Nations is calling for urgent aid for Somalia to avert a catastrophe worse than the famine that claimed 260,000 in 2011.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who visited the country on Tuesday — his first field trip since he took office in January — said the situation in the country was both tragic and regrettable.
“It’s impossible to describe. It’s the suffering of the people, every single person we have seen had a personal story of tremendous suffering. There’s no way to describe it,” he told journalists at Liiban camp in Baidoa after meeting the internally displaced people.
The UN chief later visited cholera patients and severely malnourished children at Bay Regional Hospital.
Cholera has so far claimed the lives of 25 people at the hospital. Seventy-three cholera patients were admitted at the hospital, while 2,340 were being treated as outpatients.
Earlier, Mr Guterres met with Somalia’s President Mohammed Abdullahi Farmajo in Mogadishu and appealed for $825 million humanitarian support for the country.
“The combination of drought, conflict and disease outbreak calls for massive support,” Mr Guterres said.
President Farmajo said his first priority was to address the drought crisis to avert a famine.