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Daily Press Briefing by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General, 8 April 2022 - Ethiopia, Cameroon

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Ethiopia

And staying in the Horn of Africa, on Ethiopia, I can tell you that we and our humanitarian partners have not been able to move any further aid into Tigray by road since the convoy of some 20 trucks with food and nutrition supplies and one fuel tanker arrived between April 1st and 2nd.

This was the first time that our supplies entered Tigray by road since mid-December — we are almost in mid-April — and the first time in eight months that humanitarian fuel supplies have been moved through the Semera-Mekelle corridor.

As we have been telling you, humanitarian organizations in Tigray face growing challenges in reaching people in need due to shortages of essential supplies, as well as continuing suspension of basic essential services, including banking, electricity and communications.

Out of a [target] of 5.2 million people who should be receiving food every six weeks, we, along with our partners, have reached only 1.2 million people with food, nearly six months after the current round of food distributions in Tigray got under way.

Some 73,000 people received food assistance this week alone, but half of these people received only pulses and thousands received only cooking oil. No [school] feeding has been possible in Tigray over the past week due to a lack of food stocks.

Out of an estimated 3.9 million people who need some form of health assistance, our partners were able to reach only 27,000 people in Tigray this week.

UN airlifts between Addis Ababa and Mekelle are continuing, with around 76 metric tons of nutrition supplies flown in this week. In total, 428 metric tons of humanitarian supplies have been transported by air since [January].

This has been critical, but corresponds to only about 11 trucks, or half of what could be transported by road convoy.

In neighbouring Afar, the overall humanitarian situation remains dire, despite some reported improvements in access. By the start of this week, our partners had reached more than 196,000 people with food since late February, which is around just one third of the population in need.

Mobile health and nutrition teams are also operating in 12 conflict-affected areas in Afar.

In Amhara, despite the tense security situation in parts of the region, we, along with our partners have been able to reach some 634,000 people with food since the end of March, and more than 10 million since last December.

An additional 10 mobile health and nutrition teams have been deployed in Amhara over the past week.

Our humanitarian colleagues are also telling us there are serious challenges in other parts of Ethiopia, with more than 8 million people now reported to be affected by the ongoing drought in the south of the country.

Cameroon

A quick update from Cameroon, where our team there, led by the Resident Coordinator, Matthias Naab, continues to support the authorities’ efforts to address the pandemic and other challenges.

On the health front, we helped the Government increase the budget allocation to the COVID-19 response and its socioeconomic impact from $250 million to $332 million last year.

Our team also supported COVID-19 vaccinations at 244 locations across the country, with three national vaccination campaigns having been held so far.

To date, more than 1.5 million COVID-19 vaccines have arrived in Cameroon through COVAX, with more than 1.3 million people having received at least one dose and over a million people having been fully vaccinated.

We have worked with authorities to communicate to 200,000 young people who are both in and out of school on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. Our team has helped to train more than 100 health-care workers in emergency obstetric care and on managing newborn and child illnesses.

Our team has also boosted the Government’s capacity to provide online primary education services to schools nationwide. More than 320,000 students and more than 8,000 head teachers now have access to online teaching.