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Kenya Opens New Camp for Somali Refugees

HeadlineJul 15, 2011

Kenya is opening a new camp on its border with Somalia to accommodate refugees fleeing the region’s worst drought in decades. The Kenyan government says the camp will take in around 80,000 people within 10 days. An estimated 380,000 people are currently living in nearby camps meant to hold less than one-fourth that amount. The United Nations describes the Somali drought as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, with more than 11 million people in need of life-saving assistance. A doctor at a Kenyan hospital said he is seeing increased arrivals of children suffering from severe malnutrition.

Doctor: “In the last few weeks, we’ve been seeing increasing cases of children with severe malnutrition. Of these children, most of them come with complications resulting from acute malnutrition. The children that we have seen in the wards, most of them are very sick, and most of them come here with an inability to feed, and we have to feed them through the nasal-gastric tube.”

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