DADAAB, Kenya - Seven-month-old Mihag Gedi Farah is the frail face of famine in the Horn of Africa. He stares out wide-eyed almost in alarm, his skin pulled taut over his ribs and twiglike arms.
At only 7 pounds, he weighs as much as a newborn but has the weathered look of an elderly man.
Mihag is just one of 800,000 children who officials warn could die across the region. Aid workers are rushing to bring help to dangerous and previously unreached regions of drought-ravaged Somalia.
Famine victims like Mihag bring new urgency to their efforts, raising concerns about how many hungry children still remain in Somalia, far from the feeding tubes and doctors in the field hospital at this Kenyan refugee camp.
Mihag's fragile skin crumples like thin leather under the pressure of his mother's hands, as she touches the hollows where a baby's chubby cheeks should be.
People are also reading…
Sirat Amine, a nurse-nutritionist with the International Rescue Committee, puts Mihag's odds for survival at only 50-50. A baby Mihag's age should weigh about three times what he does.
His mother, Asiah Dagane, fans Mihag with the edge of her headscarf to keep flies away. He cries weakly, and when he does, she bounces him gently to try to soothe him and murmurs softly.
"In my mind, I'm not well," she says softly. "My baby is sick. In my head, I am also sick."
Mihag is the youngest of seven children in his family. Dagane told The Associated Press through a hospital translator that she brought him and four siblings from Kismayo to Kenya after all their sheep and cattle died.
Like the tens of thousands of other Somalis fleeing starvation, the family traveled sometimes by foot, other times catching rides with passing trucks, cars or buses.
Dagane keeps vigil for her son in the ward, which is painted with cheerful pictures of balloons and fruit, lit with fluorescent bulbs. Other mothers huddle on beds next to babies with IV tubes snaking to their heads or hands.
Some infants cry, others are listless. In the middle of the room a woven basket hangs from a scale - but it's not needed to tell that many of the babies are dangerously malnourished.
Nurse Abukar Abdule says all those arriving at the field hospital complain of "severe malnutrition." Most have walked from the middle of Somalia, between Kismayo and the capital of Mogadishu.
"We have to treat them for at least a week," Abdule says. "They have no food, shelter or water. Some have diseases. Some died on the road and some were lost. Many mothers who come here have lost children."
The United Nations estimates that more 11 million people in East Africa are affected by the drought, with 3.7 million in Somalia among the worst-hit because of the ongoing civil war in the country.
Somalia's prolonged drought became a famine in part because neither the Somali government nor many aid agencies can fully operate in areas controlled by al-Qaida-linked militants, and the U.N. is set to declare all of southern Somalia a famine zone as of Aug. 1.
How to help
Here are some organizations that are taking donations for the relief effort.
CARE
1-800-422-7385
Catholic Relief Services
1-800-736-3467
Doctors Without Borders
1-888-392-0392
Mercy Corps
1-888-256-1900
Oxfam America
1-800-77-OXFAM
Save the Children
1-800-728-3843
U.N. World Food Program
1-866-929-1694
UNICEF United States Fund
1-800-FOR-KIDS
