Heartbreaking face of drought Eruduki and thousands like her are weeks from death

EVERY day little Eruduki Ero’s family watch helplessly as she loses her struggle to live.

Her withered limbs and blank stare are a potent symbol of the Kenyan government’s failure to tackle the drought and famine which are ravaging the East African country.

She weighs just 10lb, less than half the weight of a healthy child her age, and measures 3.5in, slightly more than a 10p coin, around her stick-like upper arm.

Her body is agonisingly bloated by f l uid retention resulting f rom malnutrition.

Without treatment, 22- month- old Eruduki will be dead within weeks.

“It breaks my heart to see her suffer,” cries her mother, Hellen, 32. “All I can do is pray to God and hope that he answers. I haven’t had relief aid from the government for more than a month. How are we supposed to survive?”

Eruduki is one of thousands of children across northern Kenya who are caught up in the worst famine in a generation sparked by crippling droughts.

Emergency

More than 350,000 children, pregnant women and new mothers are acutely malnourished, the United Nations says.

Malnutrition rates are above 30 per cent – double the emergency threshold – in three of Kenya’s northern counties.

Aid agencies say this is the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War and is threatening the lives of more than 20 million people across East Africa.

Volunteer health professionals are struggling to cope with rocketing numbers of people living on the brink of starvation.

Meanwhile Kenyan leaders have been accused of ignoring the plight of their own citizens while pocketing millions in foreign aid cash.

Eruduki lives in a pastoral nomad hut called a manyatta in the central Turkana state, where the drought has heaped misery on the tribal community.

Her 10-year-old sister Nancy treks more than four miles in searing 40 degree heat once a week to seek the help of a health centre. From their village she trudges through the drought-hit farm- land that once gave her family food and across the dried up bed of the Kerio River. She then makes her way over sand dunes into Nakurio, the nearest town.

But despite making this journey five times since her sister was first admitted to the health centre, little Eruduki is showing no signs of improving.

Instead, her weight has plummeted and health clinicians fear the sachets of supplements they hand out are being eaten by other family members.

Erastus Lomuria, 27, a helper at one of Save the Children’s health centres said: “We are seeing more of these cases. The drought is making life difficult.”

To feed her entire family mum Hellen was given a 2kg package of maize and grains, hardly enough to fend off hunger. And that was a month ago.

Rice

Nancy, who also has a sister Aduar, six, and a baby brother Acharait, said: “My mother has a new baby and we don’t get fed. When we wake up in the morning the babies have tea and then the rest of us share a cup of rice. My mother sells charcoal on the side of the road to make money. But if there’s no food then we don’t eat, only the baby eats.”

The Disaster Emergency Committee, made up of 13 leading UK aid agencies, says 16 million people in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya are at risk of starvation.

Hundreds of thousands of children are dropping out of school too as the food crisis puts pressure on their families.

Saleh Saeed, t he Emergency Committee chief executive, said: “Communities are out of food, crops are failing and livestock are dying. Education is just not a priority for them.

“Failure to act now will result in a lost generation of children.”