• Another 894,557 are in crisis and a further 42,668 are in emergency.
• It projects that 98,000 people will be in an emergency between October this year and January next year.
Image: FILE
A new report has shown that 900,000 Kenyans are currently facing acute food insecurity.
The regional update report released on August 29 by Food Security and Nutrition Working Group says 5.7 million Kenyans are stressed. Another 894,557 are in crisis and 42,668 are in emergency.
The report projects that 98,000 more will be in emergency between October this year and January next year.
It says 1,635,000 people will be in crisis by October and January. Some 6,084,000 people will be stressed.
The report says 760,500 children aged 6-59 months are acutely malnourished.
Some 180,400 children are severely acutely malnourished while 580,100 are moderate acute malnourished.
The report shows that 112,500 pregnant or lactating women are acutely malnourished and in need of treatment.
It cites floods due to above-normal rains, high food prices, conflict and insecurity, crop pests and diseases such as fall armyworm as key drivers of acute food insecurity.
High disease burden, inadequate food consumption, elevated levels of food insecurity, sub-optimal childcare practices, insufficient WASH practices, insufficient access to health services as well as reduced humanitarian assistance are some of the key drivers of acute malnutrition.
Risk factors to monitor acute food insecurity include forecasted below-average October to December short rains and food-insecure and flood-affected populations in need of humanitarian assistance.
It says the supply chain and availability of nutrition commodities and essential medical supplies to health facilities, human disease trends and outbreaks and their effect on malnutrition and availability of farm inputs and extension services as other risk factors.
Other risk factors include incidences of crop pests and diseases in the cropping areas, livestock productivity and health, likely increase in resource-based conflict and insecurity incidences during the dry period and increase in prices of staple food across major food commodity markets.
The risk factors to monitor for acute malnutrition include elevated acute malnutrition in Marsabit, Baringo, Turkana, Mandera and Samburu counties.
Other risk factors include morbidities, disease outbreaks and water, sanitation and hygiene situations.
Some of the risk factors to monitor acute malnutrition include effects of short rains on the continuity of health and nutrition services and the effect of scaled down outreaches on coverage of health and nutrition services in far-flung areas.
The report says despite the improvement due to the seasonal performance of rains, several people are still affected by food insecurity.
“The number of people under IPC phase 3 and above is still high at 39 million in IGAD countries and 66 million people in East and Central Africa. Better rainfall over the past two seasons contributed to the decrease of food insecure population (IPC P3+) in some countries compared to the same period last year.”
The report classifies 33 Million people (IGAD region) as stressed and as such, their resilience capacity should be enhanced to avoid them sliding into a worse food security phase.