Fighting to make a difference as hunger stalks Horn of Africa

from the Age

THE people are desperately hungry. Two thousand of them queue from early morning to see Australian nurse Alana Baker and her co-workers for the chance to escape from the grip of acute malnutrition.

Drizzling rain and cool temperatures do not deter them nor does the crowd-control man whipping people back into line with a branch. Their babies cry. They wait.

Ms Baker, 28, is in the second week of a three-month mission in southern Ethiopia with Medecins Sans Frontieres Belgium, working as an outreach nutritional nurse.

Thousands of people, mainly farmers, travel up to 250 kilometres to reach the mobile clinic where Ms Baker and up to 10 other staff work.

The team visits five locations each week, testing for malaria and screening the people for severe and moderately acute malnutrition. They were working in the small rural village of Allelu when these photographs were taken.

The team weighs, measures and tests the appetites of those who come to see them, registering them and giving nutritional supplements to those who need them.

Ms Baker, from Brisbane, has been a nurse for seven years. She has worked in remote locations in Australia, including Thursday Island and Derby in Western Australia, as well as London.

Her first mission with MSF was in Sri Lanka. Five months after coming home and working as an agency nurse, she flew to Ethiopia.

In May, the nutritional crisis in southern Ethiopia was dire, according to Ms Baker, but the clinics are making a difference. To see a child becoming healthier and gaining weight "makes your heart sing", she says.

Last week the UN estimated that up to 17 million people in the Horn of Africa urgently needed food, up from 9 million earlier this year, as drought, soaring food prices and conflict took a toll on the region.

An anti-poverty summit this week pledged nearly $US3 billion ($A3.58 billion) to fund an ambitious malaria control plan to save more than 4.2 million lives around the world. The funding, which includes $US1.1 billion from the World Bank, will be used to support rapid implementation of the first global malaria action plan.

It was announced at a summit called by UN chief Ban Ki-moon to re-energise the race to achieve eight poverty reduction goals by 2015.

Malaria affects half of the world's population — 3.3 billion people in 109 countries — and causes nearly 1 million deaths per year, according to UN officials.

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