0:00 a dire emergency in east africa the drought there exacerbating the hunger crisis as many as 20 million people could be starving by the middle of this
0:08 year half of them children new numbers from aid organizations reveal this startling stat every second an additional person in east africa is on
0:16 the verge of starvation unless rain arrives our chief national correspondent matt gutman traveled to kenya and files this in-depth report
0:27 it's hard work extracting calories from what looks like a stone all you eat all day is this eastern africa is in the
0:34 worst drought in decades and this is the only food ikirub and other villagers eat these days
0:41 ikiru says he doesn't know his age but he does know he's starving famine is stalking the sun-blasted
0:49 plains of kenya ethiopia and somalia and according to aid groups up to 20
0:56 million people like hikiru don't know if they'll eat today or tomorrow the majority of them are herders
1:03 it's estimated that more than 3 million livestock have died over the past two years carcasses of cattle littering roadways
1:11 many too weak to rise to their feet giraffe dying by the dozen and in 2020 and 2021 what little grazing
1:19 there was devoured by swarms of locusts we traveled to turkana county in northern kenya with the international
1:28 rescue committee where once dependable grazing land has yielded to wastelands of sand and dry
1:35 this is the cosapear river in northern kenya 50 000 people depend on this river now
1:44 a good year i would be underwater but this is not a good year this is the fourth consecutive failed reigns
1:51 nd the people here are growing desperate over the past 20 years droughts have doubled in kenya due to climate change
1:59 despite its low contribution to global warming africa is the most vulnerable continent emissions from the rest of the world threatening nearly every aspect of
2:07 ife here and the war in ukraine has only made things worse driving up the price of food and fuel
2:14 here it's up to 16 a gallon in a place where most people live on less than a dollar a day
2:22 david nice to meet you thank you we met these community leaders who took us to what had been sorghum fields this used
2:29 to be a farm right here this is the farm they once grew crops in this sand but no rain means no crops if there are no
2:37 crops here now what do people eat nothing then we spotted those kids including
2:45 ikeru carrying those heavy sacks on their heads they were filled with that rock like fruit there are now up to 22 million herders
2:54 here in the horn of africa whose livestock provide dairy products and meat i asked akiru when he last ate something
3:01 her than palm fruit the other night he said when one of their goats died of starvation here in the horn of africa
3:08 children bear an enormous burden they help herd livestock forage for food and they fetch water it can take most of the
3:16 day to roll those heavy yellow drums of water to a source fill them and then push them back home we are talking about close to two
3:24 million children in the region which are severely acutely managed we cannot say
3:31 in words in terms of what it means for those individuals and families that are impacted by this crisis
3:39 for these children hunger is as constant as that merciless son kuru
3:46 [Applause]
3:48 there on the ground mashing the previous day's haul of palm fruit was their grandmother this was to be dinner for the kids
3:56 and the animals how close is that to famine because to me when you're only source of
4:02 ourishment are these palm fruit that just doesn't seem sustainable it is no there's no protein there's no fat there's no nutri there's no
4:10 nutrients actually it's just empty calories to keep you going there's nothing else to eat right her name is nakaleso she says she
4:19 doesn't know much about the outside world it's the realm beyond that she now worries about does it feel to you right now that
4:26 god has forgotten you she tells us it feels like god has gone far away
4:34 ikiru takes me to try to find their remaining goats but there was something else out there when you hear that sound of thunder does
4:40 it make you hopeful it feels very hopeful that the rain is
4:48 now coming this time the thunder brought a deluge goats cowering against a hut the first
4:56 time it rained in nearly two years we soon realized the cruelty of these rains sporadic and localized
5:04 nd what little has fallen has come two months too late we were hoping that this rain will be
5:11 good enough but this rain also failing and being below average will actually result in catastrophic
5:19 consequences for the population a couple of hours west of there towards the sudanese border is the kakuma
5:27 refugee camp dr sila monte runs the international rescue committee hospital there she took us to what's called the stabilization
5:34 ward over the previous one month we've had an increase in admissions we are currently on an average of 20 admissions um
5:43 a day the kids are so small they're so malnourished i i didn't even see them they just looked like bundles of
5:51 blankets once hunger turns into malnourishment the fight back to health can take months
5:58 yes the child is one year nine months and has been malnourished for about six months now
6:07 as been on the outpatient feeding therapeutic feeding program but with minimal response then over the
6:14 past three days every three hours a break from the monotony the milkman comes through
6:21 the mothers tenderly pour the formula into the children's mouths because they usually so malnourished the whole body shuts down that includes
6:30 the digestive tract so they are usually unable to digest food so even giving them just plain milk they
6:38 are unable to digest that once a child's system breaks down it takes months to build back strength we noticed this
6:45 mother with twins her sister helping her they said they had fled here from congo her twins just five weeks old they were
6:53 barely even able to cry but their mother could her name is christine denis she told us she had five kids under five she
7:02 ad run away from domestic violence and felt like now there were no options kenya itself the trucana region has been
7:09 n a drought for the past one year so even ourselves we are unable to support our population and even when they get
7:17 help sometimes these children don't make it so out of the 20 some kids that are in that room right now that we saw
7:24 three are not going to make it statistically statistically yes these deaths take a toll knows whose job
7:32 it is like dr monte to keep those children alive you do this because you feel like you can help
7:40 but i saw you got emotional just now with that that mother does it affect you personally
7:50 two days after that big rain in akiru's village we traveled back there those villagers gathered to see what the commotion was about right there was
7:59 akiru his grandmother had just returned from fetching firewood we sat there on the ground under sun that seemed to boil the
8:07 and the children nearby i heard that one of your goats died because of the rain what does that mean for her family to go from 20 goats to 8.
8:20 and now the family now that they don't have anything to depend on because initially they depend on on those goats
8:27 and for now now that they have lost the family now will suffer what happens when all of your animals die
8:35 nakaleso tells us that children will die maybe the rains will come
8:43 maybe they won't what's for sure she said is that they're not going anywhere the children there waiting as they say
8:51 for god to remember them what a report from matt if you want to
8:59 help you can head to our website abcnews.com where we've posted his story and links to organizations that are helping those struggling with east
9:06 frica's famine hi everyone george stephanopoulos here thanks for checking out the abc news youtube channel if you'd like to get more videos show highlights and watch
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