Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is facing severe food insecurity due to the prolonged drought throughout the region. Reduced food intake and lack of varied diet, leading to malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies (e.g. vitamin A) will result in increased morbidity and mortality, particularly from communicable diseases. Disease, in turn, will aggravate nutritional losses.
Additional factors such as lack of water and population displacements – and consequent precarious sanitation – further increase the risk of communicable diseases such as cholera, typhoid fever, diarrhoea, acute respiratory infections and measles.
All across the region, the areas most severely affected by the drought are also those suffering from the highest disease burden, the weakest health care systems, with limited human resource and medical supplies and the lowest immunization coverage rates: "the poorest of the poor"