Some of the nurses and doctors at the biggest hospi-tal in Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region are having to beg for food to feed themselves, one of the med-ics has told the BBC. They have not been paid for eight months, forcing them to find other ways of supporting their families, he said.
The doctor’s account comes as the UN reports that “severe hunger” was hitting ever more people in Tigray. It says that 2.2 million people “are suffering an extreme lack of food”.
Half of all pregnant and breastfeeding women are suffering from malnutrition, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) survey found.
EXPLAINER: Why the Ethiopia conflict mat-ters to the world
BACKGROUND: Ethiopia’s Tigray war – and how it erupted
Overall, in Tigray and the other two regions af-fected by the months of fighting, Amhara and Afar, nine million people need some form of food assis-tance, the WFP adds.
Ethiopian federal government forces have been battling rebels from the northern Tigray region since November 2020 in a conflict that has killed thou-sands of people. For a lot of that time much of Tigray has been cut off, making it hard to deliver vital aid and medi-cal supplies.—AFP
