Global food crisis takes heavy toll on east Africa.

An estimated 8·8 million people in east Africa are going hungry, and a sluggish international response is failing to address the growing crisis, which is approaching famine conditions in some areas. The USA, Europe, and other wealthy donors, despite warnings forecasting the crisis since late last year, have responded too little and too late, forcing international aid agencies to reduce emergency feeding programmes in the region. The US Government’s Famine Early Warning Network issued a series of special alerts in June calling it “the most severe food security emergency in the world today...exacerbated by extremely high food prices, reduced coping capacity, and a limited humanitarian response”. The agency alert warned that “large-scale emergency assistance is urgently needed across the eastern Horn of Africa in order to save lives, treat acute malnutrition, and prevent further asset losses”. Emergency appeals throughout the region have only received 51% of the US$1·293 billion in requested funding for Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, according to the UN. “The response is slow, coming in small quantities, and coming in late, at a time when the impact has been hitting hard on children and pregnant women”, said Geoff rey Kalebbo Denye, of the aid agency World Vision in Kenya. If suffi cient funds had arrived earlier, it could have substantially reduced the eff ect of the drought, he said. Despite warnings forecasting the crisis since November, 2010, by March, 2011, the World Food Programme (WFP) was 60% underfunded, and had to cut back its feeding programmes in Somalia and Ethiopia. The shortfall is now down to about 30%. The crisis in east Africa has received very little press coverage outside the region, but world leaders are no strangers to the severity of the conditions, especially President Barack Obama, who visited Wajir, one of the worst hit areas in Kenya during a drought in 2006. Wajir, has