A child in Ethiopia, so close to starving

	© UNICEF/KENA00397/Shehzad Noorani
	Ibro Bekeri Yusef feeds therapeutic milk to his severely malnourished five-year-old daughter Khesna, at the UNICEF-supported feeding unit of Bissidimo Hospital in East Harerghe Zone of Oromia Region.

When five-year-old Khesna Ibro arrived in her father’s arms at Bissidimo Hospital in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region, she was weak and glassy-eyed from acute malnutrition. Her father, Ibro Bekeri Yusef, had carried the young girl for a full day to get from his small farm to the UNICEF-supported feeding unit at the hospital. As soon as they arrived, nutrition workers started Khesna on a feeding program to help her body recover from the shock of malnutrition.

Soon, Mr. Ibro and Khesna were sitting in the hospital’s courtyard, where he gently gave her small sips of therapeutic milk from a bright orange cup. This nutrient-rich milk is often the first food given to children as severely malnourished as Khesna (in small doses, eight times a day) because it helps condition their bodies to digest food again. At first, Khesna’s system was unable to cope with even a little milk, and she threw it back up. Slowly but surely, though, her body would begin to adjust.

As I’ve written before, the global food crisis has hit Ethiopia incredibly hard. UNICEF estimates that over 100,000 of the country’s children are severely malnourished. Khesna’s father, Ibro Bekeri Yusef, was deeply worried about his six other children. “My other children are also suffering,” he said. “I used to live well with the income I earned. But now the price of grain has gone up. We can’t afford to buy sorghum