Nearly too weak to cry, Masteha Jama Mohamed's three-month-old daughter is barely the length of her forearm, as the severely malnourished baby struggles for survival in famine-hit Somalia.

Mohamed is herself just a teenager: the 16-year-old mother says her baby has been sick ever since she was two weeks old, and now at 2.5 kilogrammes, is still only the weight of a newborn.

But even after reaching Mogadishu's Banadir hospital, she still fears her child might not survive.

"I have not got help since I arrived," said Mohamed wearily, who had been at the hospital for around six hours. "I am afraid that if she remains like this she might die."

Mohamed trekked from Afgoye town -- the world's largest camp for displaced people where famine was declared last month -- into war-torn Mogadishu in a desperate search for help.

Three-quarters of a million people are facing death by starvation in Somalia according the United Nations, who declared Monday that famine had spread to a sixth southern region of the beleaguered Horn of Africa state.

Many children are brought to the hospital in a critical state. Over 100,00 people have fled into Mogadishu in the past two months seeking food or shelter.

"Their immune system is so suppressed that it brings complications -- most of them have parasites and diarrhoea," said Yasmin Hiller, a German nurse, who works in the overcrowded Benadir hospital.

"For the small kids with dehydration, it is very difficult to stabilise them -- often they die because their complications are too many," she added.

The beds are all full with an influx of malnourished children, and some parents sleep on the floor for lack of space.

Even after treatment in hospital, children struggle for survival from a host of other diseases rife in the city, where many live in the ruins of bombed-out buildings or in makeshift shelters of rag and plastic.

"We have no hope...yet we hope to get treatment," Fadumo Mohamed Omar, standing by her emaciated 10-year-old daughter, suffering from malnutrition and epilepsy, lying on a stretcher in the hospital's busy hallway.

"The doctors said they can do nothing for her epilepsy, but can treat the malnutrition," said Ali Mohamed, Omar's neighbour, who accompanied her.

Some 12.4 million people in the Horn of Africa, including parts of Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and Uganda, are affected by the worst drought in decades in the region and are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the UN.

But Somalia is the hardest hit. Two-decades of civil war and restrictions on relief groups by Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab rebels have worsened the plight of hundreds of thousands of drought-hit Somalis.

Many farm animals on which the people depended have died, and families rely on handouts in Mogadishu, one of the world's most dangerous cities.

"I lost all my cattle and crops. We had nothing to survive on, so we left," said Halima Abdi Hussein, who fled the Shebab-controlled Lower Shabelle region.

"Here at least we get some food. We feel safe as long as we get to eat," said 28-year-old Hussein, standing next to her basic plastic shelter home.

The World Food Programme has set up 23 feeding centres in the war-racked city, distributing food to nearly one million people last month.

"It is the probably the most difficult operation we have anywhere in the world," said Barry Came, a WFP spokesman. "It is very hard to get on the ground to monitor what's happening."

Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation

Tweet