Hunger and disease claim 5,000 lives in blockaded Tigray, says report

NEARLY 1,500 people died of malnutrition in part of Ethiopia’s blockaded Tigray region over a four-month period last year, including more than 350 young children, a report by the region’s health bureau says.

It cites more than 5,000 blockade-related deaths in all from hunger and disease in the largest official death toll yet associated with the country’s war.

“Deaths are alarmingly increasing,” including from easily preventable diseases like rabies as medicines run out or expire, the head of Tigray’s health bureau, Hagos Godefay, said late last year as the findings were being compiled.

“This is one of the worst times of my life, I can tell you.”

His report on the findings, published this week by the independent Ethiopia Insight, said 5,421 deaths were confirmed in Tigray between July and October in an assessment by his bureau and some international aid groups. It was the first such assessment since the war between Tigray and Ethiopian forces began in November 2020, he said.

The deaths were overwhelmingly from malnutrition, infectious disease and non-communicable diseases as the health bureau and partners sought to gauge the effects on Tigray’s population of its health system being largely destroyed by combat. The deaths do not reflect people killed in combat, Mr Hagos said yesterday in a call from the Tigray capital, Mekele, although the report reflects a small percentage of deaths from air strikes.

The mortality assessment covered roughly 40 per cent of Tigray, he said, since occupation of some areas by combatants and the lack of fuel caused by the blockade has limited data-gathering and aid delivery.

“Since the magnitude of the destruction and health crisis in the inaccessible areas is undoubtedly high, the survey is bound to underreport the real extent of the crisis,” Mr Hagos wrote.