The U.N.‘s Emer­gency Response Fund has released six mil­lion dol­lars to Ethiopia. The coun­try is going through severe mal­nu­tri­tion, due to a large short­fall in food. The rainy sea­son in Ethiopia was not wet enough and caused the short­age in food.

From the IRIN, we read more of the emer­gency response.

Ethiopia is fac­ing chal­lenges in pro­vid­ing food, health, nutri­tion, water and san­i­ta­tion, emer­gency shel­ter, agri­cul­ture and liveli­hoods, accord­ing to the UN Human­i­tar­ian Coor­di­na­tor, Fidele Saras­soro.

To counter these chal­lenges, the UN has allo­cated US$6 mil­lion from its Cen­tral Emer­gency Response Fund (CERF).

“I have directed the human­i­tar­ian com­mu­nity jointly to agree on pri­or­ity areas in which this new money can imme­di­ately be put to use,” Saras­soro said.

At the same time, the fed­eral Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment and Food Secu­rity Sec­tor (DRMFSS) has announced that ris­ing mal­nu­tri­tion and food inse­cu­rity were a grow­ing con­cern and likely to lead to 6.2 mil­lion Ethiopi­ans rely­ing on food aid, out of a pop­u­la­tion of approx­i­mately 77 million.

At present, 4.9 mil­lion peo­ple in the coun­try ben­e­fit from relief food.

Accord­ing to the DRMFSS, the coun­try has a short­fall of 176,000T of food. How­ever, this is likely to increase to 390,000T in the months up to Decem­ber 2009.

“Because of the exist­ing short­fall, only three of the six planned rounds of food allo­ca­tions have been dis­trib­uted to date,” the UN Office for the Coor­di­na­tion of Human­i­tar­ian Affairs (OCHA), said in a state­ment on 20 July.

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