The boy named Wealthy who weighs half what he should

Little Haftom is nearly five years old.

His name means “wealthy” in the Tigriyna language but he weighs just half what he should.

As the doctor pulls up his jumper and tracksuit bottoms to show his spindly arms and legs, his mother looks on impassively.

She does not want to give her name.

This is the daily reality of hunger and malnutrition after two years of civil war in the northern Ethiopia region of Tigray. A peace deal has ended the fighting but the fallout from the conflict remains.

In August, the UN estimated that nearly one in three children under the age of five in Tigray were malnourished.

As federal government soldiers and Tigrayan forces fought, the Ethiopian authorities either limited or heavily restricted the aid getting into the northern region, leading to an effective blockade.

‘Empty-handed’

Makda, who is the same age as the conflict itself, lies like a baby in the arms of her mother Hiwot.

She is listless and her stomach is heavily swollen.

“It’s become so difficult to get food,” says Hiwot. “It’s very hard to eat even once a day.”

But since she was admitted to hospital, Makda has been getting worse.

“My daughter is in this situation because we’re told there is no medicine. We haven’t been able to get anything,” says Hiwot.

“Even when we were here last year with the same problem, I couldn’t get anything and I went home empty-handed.”

The families of Haftom and Makda have been seeking treatment in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. The BBC filmed and interviewed them within the past month.

After August, as federal government forces took more territory, the Tigrayan authorities agreed to a ceasefire.

Under the terms of the peace deal signed at the beginning of last month, the authorities in the capital, Addis Ababa, said they would send in more aid.

‘Used up in a day’

Dr Kibrom Gebreselassie has been a surgeon at Ayder Referral Hospital for 15 years.

It is the biggest public hospital in the region which is home to seven million people.

“To see young children and mothers suffer and cry every day, it’s traumatising,” says Dr Kibrom.

“A lot of children have died in our hospital because once a child has malnutrition, it’s not only food you have to give them. They need medication, antibiotics, minerals… and we don’t have this.”

Some of what is needed seems to be arriving but not nearly enough.

Dr Kibrom says two trucks with medical supplies from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were the first to reach Mekelle.

“The amount of medicine that we received was enough for half of our patients and only lasted for a single day,” he sighs.

For each day that aid does not get to the hospital, more patients die.

“Take cancer patients, the situation is very grim. There has been no chemotherapy in the entire Tigray,” says Dr Kibrom.

“Each day, each week, each month, the stage of their cancer worsens.

“If it was treatable before, now it’s becoming inoperable. For those very sick individuals each day, each hour counts.”

 

Source: BBC