Writ­ten by: Thin Lei Win

Mon­go­lians in the vil­lage of Baruun Kharaa, some 160 km (100 miles) north of Ulan Bator, Jan. 17, 2006. REUTERS/ Nir Elias

Mon­go­lians in the vil­lage of Baruun Kharaa, some 160 km (100 miles) north of Ulan Bator, Jan. 17, 2006. REUTERS/ Nir Elias

BANGKOK (Alert­Net) — An unusu­ally severe win­ter fol­low­ing a sum­mer drought risks push­ing almost 200,000 peo­ple into hunger and deeper poverty in Mon­go­lia, the United Nations has warned.

Daily tem­per­a­tures have fallen below –40 degrees Cel­cius in most of the coun­try — well below habit­ual win­ter tem­per­a­tures of –15 to –35 degrees. As a result, more than one mil­lion live­stock have already died, accord­ing to the National Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency.

In addi­tion, stock­piles of live­stock fod­der are low after the sum­mer drought, the United Nations said in a state­ment on Monday.

“It’s an unfold­ing sit­u­a­tion which is pre­dicted to worsen over time,” Rana Flow­ers, the organisation’s res­i­dent coor­di­na­tor in Mon­go­lia, told Alert­Net. “The focus at the moment is on the liveli­hood issue.”

Over a third of Mongolia’s work­ing pop­u­la­tion live off live­stock herd­ing, the World Bank says.

Mongolia’s gov­ern­ment has appealed to donors for food, med­i­cines, heat­ing sup­plies, warm cloth­ing, as well as fund­ing to buy and deliver fod­der for livestock.

“At this point in time, the gov­ern­ment is look­ing at seven of the provinces in which there are 52 vil­lages that are con­sid­ered to be in dis­as­ter and in those we’re count­ing about 177,000 peo­ple, includ­ing 72,000 chil­dren,” Flow­ers said on Tuesday.

The United Nations teams in Mon­go­lia are also con­cerned about the poor, par­tic­u­larly those liv­ing in the worst-affected vil­lages, where heavy snow has frozen into solid ice mak­ing the ground impos­si­ble to travel on, Flow­ers said.

“The poor did not have the resources to stock­pile food or fuel for heat­ing and the sup­plies in the now inac­ces­si­ble vil­lages as a whole are stretched,” she added in the statement.

The freez­ing weather and heavy snow­fall make trav­el­ling on Mongolia’s few roads extremely dif­fi­cult, cut­ting off preg­nant women and the ill from health care — espe­cially wor­ry­ing given that Mon­go­lia is suf­fer­ing from an out­break of the H1N1 strain of flu.

“We have a pop­u­la­tion that any­way has a chronic dis­ease bur­den,” Flow­ers said, adding that tuber­cu­lo­sis and hepati­tis are widespread.

A sim­i­lar, but less severe, com­bi­na­tion of a sum­mer drought fol­lowed by a win­ter freeze in 2001 led to a rise in mal­nu­tri­tion and acute infec­tions among chil­dren and preg­nant women, the United Nations said. The cur­rent pres­sure on reserves of food and ani­mal fod­der risks lead­ing to con­tin­u­ing short­ages even after the weather mel­lows, it added.

“The cur­rent pre­dic­tions are that we’re going to receive heavy snow par­tic­u­larly over the next weeks and also well into Feb­ru­ary,” Flow­ers said. “This is not going to bring any relief for the population.”

via Reuters Alert­Net — Extreme weather threat­ens Mon­go­lians with hunger and poverty.

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